Trevone Objectors Group, R (On the Application Of) v The Cornwall Council

Whether Schedule 2 development requires environmental impact assessment is a matter of planning judgment. The decision-maker must consider whether significant environmental effects are likely, applying the precautionary principle and relevant Schedule 3 factors. Permanent or irreversible impact does not automatically require assessment. Nor does location in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty make assessment mandatory in every case. Size may be a material factor, although it cannot operate as an automatic exclusion where other relevant factors indicate possible significance. The court’s review is limited: a screening decision will be unlawful only if it involves legal error or is irrational on the applicable public-law standard.

The claimant, a group of local residents, sought judicial review of Cornwall Council’s grant of planning permission for 15 affordable dwellings within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Permission had been granted without an environmental impact assessment after the Council issued a screening opinion concluding that the proposal was not EIA development. Permission to proceed was limited to the allegation that the Council had unlawfully failed to require assessment under the EIA regime.

The claim challenged the Council’s interpretation of its local plan, its treatment of the precautionary principle, its alleged reliance on the size of the development as determinative, and the rationality of the screening conclusion.

1. Claim dismissed. The Council had lawfully granted planning permission without requiring an environmental impact assessment.
2. Paragraph 5.31 of the North Cornwall Local Plan 1999 was narrative supporting Policy ENV1, rather than a freestanding rule defining every development of 10 or more dwellings as major development. In the absence of an express definition, whether development was major was a matter of planning judgment on the circumstances of the case. It was wrong to import the definition in the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) Order 2010, because that definition was confined to that Order and the Council had chosen not to adopt it in the Local Plan.
3. The Council had regard to Policy ENV1 and expressly recognised in its decision notice that the proposal departed from the policy. The development’s environmental effects had been weighed against other material considerations under section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
4. The screening exercise required consideration of whether significant environmental effects were likely, applying the precautionary principle and the criteria in Schedule 3. The guidance in R (Loader) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2012] EWCA Civ 869 and R (Evans) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2013] EWCA Civ 115 did not make permanent or irreversible harm automatically sufficient to require an EIA.
5. The screening opinion considered the development’s nature, size, location, extent, magnitude, probability and duration, together with the relevant Schedule 3 matters. Although size could not by itself exclude significant effects, it was a material factor which the officer was entitled to weigh against the other considerations.
6. The conclusion that the proposal was unlikely to have significant environmental effects was not irrational. An adverse landscape impact, visibility, harm to an AONB, the section 85 duty under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, the Local Plan, the precautionary principle and landscape guidance did not compel a different legal conclusion.