Castletown Estates Ltd & Anor v Welsh Ministers

In a planning challenge, the weight given to material considerations is for the decision-maker, provided the statutory development plan is considered, relevant considerations are taken into account, and irrelevant considerations are excluded. A decision-maker may adopt a precautionary and robust approach to flood risk, including using all relevant thresholds in Technical Advice Note 15 as an aid to assessing actual risk, even where a particular threshold is not formally applicable. Advice from the environmental regulator must be given due weight, but the planning decision-maker is entitled to reach a different planning judgment. An updated map or confirmation that the position remains unchanged does not breach procedural fairness where it introduces no genuinely new matter. The application was dismissed.

Castletown Estates Ltd sought outline permission for mixed-use redevelopment of a former industrial site at Burry Port. Carmarthenshire County Council supported the proposal. The Welsh Ministers called in the application under section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

A planning inspector recommended permission, finding that mitigation would produce acceptable flood-risk conditions despite the site being shown in zone C2 on the development advice map. The Welsh Ministers rejected that recommendation, giving significant weight to the conflict with development-plan and national flood-risk policies. The claimants challenged the decision under section 288 of the 1990 Act, alleging material errors of fact, failure to consider relevant matters, misapplication of policy, inadequate reasons and procedural unfairness.

1. Application dismissed. The Minister was required to have regard to the statutory development plan and determine the application in accordance with it unless material considerations indicated otherwise, under section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The weight given to material considerations was a matter for the Minister, absent legal error.
2. The Minister had not ignored the claimants’ case that the flood maps were inaccurate. The decision letter recorded that submission and took account of the inspector’s discussion of the site-specific flood evidence. The Minister accepted the relevant factual material but reached a different planning judgment about whether the proposed mitigation demonstrated that there would be no unacceptable actual flood risk.
3. The precautionary approach in Technical Advice Note 15 entitled the Minister to consider the thresholds in Appendix A1.14 and all four thresholds in Appendix A1.15 as aids to assessing actual flood risk. The fact that residential development in zone C2 was not permitted did not prevent those thresholds from informing the balancing exercise. The developer bore the onus of demonstrating an acceptable risk, and the Minister was entitled to adopt a robust approach, including consideration of the rate of rise, speed of inundation and velocity of floodwaters.
4. The Minister had properly considered the views of Natural Resources Wales and was entitled to take a different view. The failure expressly to mention clarification letter CL-09-06 did not establish legal error because it added nothing relevant to the issue and a decision-maker need not address every point.
5. There was no breach of rule 17(5) of the Town and Country Planning (Inquiries Procedure Wales) Rules 2003. The 2013 map updates introduced no new factual position affecting the site. They merely confirmed that its classification had not changed. In any event, no procedural unfairness had been shown.

Not stated in the judgment.