Trail Riders Fellowship & Ors v Powys County Council

A traffic regulation order may lawfully restrict or prohibit vehicular use without being subject to a general proportionality requirement. The authority must, however, consider the statutory purposes in section 1 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 and discharge the qualified duty in section 122 by balancing traffic movement against the specified statutory and other relevant factors. The authority’s assessment of weight and the adequacy of alternative restrictions is ordinarily subject to the high threshold of judicial review. A highway authority’s separate and absolute duty to maintain highways does not determine whether a traffic regulation order should be made. The orders were quashed because the court could not exclude the possibility that the decision-maker had been influenced by the Council’s desire to improve its position in related legal proceedings.

The applicants challenged permanent traffic regulation orders made by Powys County Council in respect of two byways open to all traffic. The orders prohibited motor vehicles, motorcycles and horse-drawn vehicles. The applicants alleged errors of law, inadequate reasons, irrationality, reliance on irrelevant considerations and procedural defects.

The challenge followed earlier statutory notices and proceedings concerning the Council’s duty to repair the byways. The Council relied on its Motorised Access Strategy, the condition and sustainability of the routes, public safety, environmental damage and the cost of repair. The central issues were whether the Council had properly applied sections 1 and 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, and whether its consideration of the related repair proceedings was lawful.

1. The orders were quashed. The Council had considered the relevant statutory purposes and had regard to the qualified duty under section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. The court rejected the submission that a total prohibition on vehicular traffic must be an exceptional measure.
2. The duty under section 122 is qualified. The duty to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of traffic is to be balanced against the matters in section 122(2), including amenity and other relevant considerations, together with the purposes in section 1. That duty has no automatic primacy. The weight given to competing considerations is generally for the decision-maker.
3. The court was not concerned with whether the least restrictive measure had been chosen. Alternative measures were relevant, and failure to adopt a less restrictive approach might in an appropriate case be irrational. The Council had considered seasonal and weight restrictions and was entitled to conclude that they would not achieve the statutory purposes.
4. The Council was entitled to treat the predominant expected use of the byways as pedestrian, equestrian and cycling use. That assessment was relevant to the traffic orders and did not determine the separate question of the standard to which the highways had to be maintained.
5. The Council’s highway-maintenance duties under the Highways Act 1980 were separate from its traffic-regulation functions. The maintenance duty was absolute, whereas the traffic-regulation duty was qualified. Alleged failures to maintain the byways therefore did not invalidate the orders.
6. The statement of reasons did not need expressly to cite section 122 or reproduce the Council’s reasoning on that section. Read in context, it enabled sophisticated consultees to respond on the relevant issues and caused no prejudice.
7. The reports’ reference to the Council’s related Crown Court appeal was permissible as information about relevant developments. But the statement that an adverse decision would jeopardise the Council’s defence created a real possibility that the committee had been influenced by the improper consideration of improving the Council’s position in that litigation. That possibility could not be excluded, and the orders therefore had to be quashed.