Earl Shilton Action Group, R (on the application of) v Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council & Ors

Planning decision-makers must understand and apply relevant policies, but the weight given to material considerations remains a matter of planning judgment, subject to irrationality. An officer’s report is read fairly and as a whole, having regard to its knowledgeable readership; it is not construed like a statute. A committee may ordinarily be taken to adopt the reasoning of an officer’s recommendation where it agrees with that recommendation. A policy creating a presumption in favour of development does so only where the proposal satisfies the policy’s stated criteria. Decision-makers may rely on an existing assessment of need and omit newer data where the newer material is insufficiently robust and there is no realistic possibility that it would have altered the decision.

The claimant residents’ association sought judicial review of the Council’s grant of planning permission for a ten-pitch Gypsy and Traveller site. The challenge alleged that the officer’s report misrepresented national and local planning policy and failed to put before the Planning Committee a later assessment which indicated a lower level of need.

Permission had previously been granted on one limb concerning the interpretation of paragraph 23 of the Planning Policy for Traveller Sites. Permission had been refused on two other grounds, and the remaining grounds were dealt with on a rolled-up basis. The central issues were whether the report materially misled the Committee and whether the later needs assessment was material to the decision.

1. Ground 1A dismissed. Paragraph 23 of the Planning Policy for Traveller Sites required new traveller-site development in the specified open-countryside circumstances to be strictly limited. The officer’s clumsy wording did not misstate that policy. Read as a whole, the report treated the policy as applicable but concluded that the identified need and the site’s sustainability justified giving it insufficient weight to require refusal. That was a planning judgment.
2. Ground 1B was unarguable. The reference to the site being “sequentially preferable” was an obvious typographical error. The report was addressing sustainability and the policy preference for effective use of previously developed, untidy or derelict land. It did not suggest that alternative sites existed or that a sequential comparison had been undertaken.
3. Ground 2 was unarguable. CS Policy 18 did not create a presumption in favour of every Gypsy or Traveller site. It created such a presumption only if the proposal satisfied the policy’s criteria and design guidance. The officer’s report had evaluated those criteria and concluded that they were met.
4. Ground 3 was unarguable. The later needs assessment could properly be treated with caution. Its figures were difficult to reconcile with the earlier assessment, lacked an explained basis for the apparent reduction, had not been approved for individual decision-taking, and remained subject to the development-plan process. Even on the claimant’s favourable reading, there was no realistic possibility that the data would have changed the decision. The officer was therefore entitled not to put them before the Committee.
5. The substantive application for judicial review on Ground 1A was refused. All applications for permission to proceed on the other grounds were refused.

This was a first-instance judicial review in the High Court (Administrative Court). The judgment records that permission to proceed had previously been granted on Ground 1A and refused on Grounds 1B and 2; the court dealt with the substantive claim and the renewed permission applications together.