Chiltern District Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

A challenge under Town and Country Planning Act 1990 section 288 is concerned with legality, not with the merits of an inspector’s planning judgment. The court cannot intervene merely because another inspector might have reached a different conclusion. The decision must, however, be properly reasoned and comply with the statutory and other legal requirements governing the appeal. Where an inspector’s decision is unlawful, the court may quash it even if the claimant seeking to uphold it considers the outcome substantively correct. The appropriate consequence is that the planning appeal is restored for a lawful decision by a new inspector.

Chiltern District Council applied under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash an inspector’s decision allowing Mr Frank Lord’s planning appeal concerning a mobile home for agricultural use and toilet facilities at Penn Meadow Farm, Buckinghamshire.

The Council alleged that the inspector had failed to give primacy to the local development plan and had instead found a contradiction between that plan and the National Planning Policy Framework’s Green Belt provisions. The Secretary of State conceded that the challenge should succeed. Mr Lord sought to retain the benefit of the inspector’s decision on the basis that it was correct in the circumstances.

1. Challenge allowed. The court accepted the Secretary of State’s concession and held that the Council’s grounds of challenge would inevitably succeed. The inspector’s decision was quashed.
2. A section 288 challenge is subject to restrained grounds. It cannot succeed merely because a different inspector might have reached a different conclusion, or because the claimant challenges the inspector’s planning judgment. The decision must nevertheless be properly reasoned and comply with the legal requirements applicable to the decision.
3. The fact that the inspector’s ultimate conclusion might have been correct did not justify allowing Mr Lord to rely on an unlawful decision. If the merits support the same result, that result may be reached following a fresh decision which complies with the law.
4. Quashing the decision restored the position before the inspector’s decision: an outstanding planning appeal requiring determination by an inspector in accordance with law. The Secretary of State was ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings up to and including the hearing.

Not stated in the judgment. The decision concerned a statutory challenge to a planning inspector’s decision under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.