South Gloucestershire Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

In a statutory planning challenge, an appeal inspector must have regard to a recently adopted development plan and the material reasoning underlying its independent examination. The inspector is not bound by an earlier inspector’s view, but must address it where the same planning issue is being decided. Later national guidance may be a material consideration, but it does not automatically supersede or override the development plan. The inspector must also distinguish the housing requirement from the method used to calculate housing supply. A failure to engage with the earlier reasoning, or to explain a departure from it on an important issue, is an error of law warranting quashing of the decision.

The claimant local planning authority challenged under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 an inspector’s decision allowing an appeal under section 78 and granting personal planning permission for a mobile home in the Green Belt. The inspector treated the absence of a five-year housing land supply as a material consideration favouring the development.

The authority contended that the inspector had failed to take account of the recently adopted Core Strategy, which used the Liverpool method for addressing past housing undersupply, had failed to explain any departure from the Core Strategy Inspector’s reasoning, and had misunderstood national planning guidance by conflating housing requirement with housing supply. The central issue was whether those errors undermined the legality of the decision.

1. The application was granted and the inspector’s decision of 1 July 2014 was quashed. The matter was to be remitted to another inspector for determination on the merits.
2. The Appeal Inspector was not bound by the views of the Core Strategy Inspector. Nevertheless, those views were a material consideration because they arose from a recent, detailed independent examination concerning the same planning area and the same issue: how housing land supply for the coming five-year period should be calculated. The Appeal Inspector was required to have regard to and address them.
3. The National Planning Policy Guidance was also a material consideration, but it did not simply override the adopted Core Strategy or the earlier inspector’s reasoning. The Inspector erred by treating the guidance as superseding those matters without undertaking the required planning judgment.
4. If the Appeal Inspector had in fact taken the earlier reasoning into account, his reasons were inadequate. The issue was important and the earlier Inspector had carefully considered the local authority’s delivery record and the competing Sedgefield and Liverpool methods. The bare statement that the Council had not argued that the shortfall could not be met by the Sedgefield method did not explain the departure.
5. The Inspector also erred in law by conflating the housing requirement with housing supply. The adopted plan established the overall housing requirement. The separate question was how past undersupply should be treated when calculating the five-year supply.
6. The court declined to exercise its discretion to leave the decision standing. The errors had potentially significant consequences for the authority’s Core Strategy and were not matters the court should pre-empt by predicting the planning outcome. Costs were awarded to the claimant in the sum of £10,000 inclusive of VAT. Permission to appeal was refused, with a 14-day extension for filing an appellant’s notice.

First-instance statutory challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The inspector’s decision was quashed and the matter remitted to another inspector.