Hill, R (On the Application Of) v Cornwall Council

A planning committee must receive a report sufficiently clear and full to identify the material issues, but the report need not set out every expert disagreement. Where the likely noise is familiar, committee members may apply their own planning judgment to its character and impact. A condition restricting a particular noise source is lawful to reject as irrationality is not established merely because the source may be harmful. A planning condition must be intelligible and enforceable. If a defective condition can be corrected under section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the court may declare the claim successful to that limited extent without quashing the permission.

The claimant sought judicial review of Cornwall Council’s grant of planning permission for a synthetic sports pitch, enclosure, store, floodlighting and regrading at Treviglas Community College. He challenged the Council’s treatment of noise evidence, its refusal to impose a condition prohibiting whistles outside school hours, and the wording of a community use condition.

The claim proceeded on three grounds. The central issues were whether the committee had been adequately informed about competing noise assessments and the Environmental Health Officer’s views, whether rejection of the whistle condition was irrational, and whether the community use condition was sufficiently precise and enforceable.

1. Noise and officer’s report. The committee had the material needed to assess the noise impact. The report identified that the proposal would permit use after dark, referred to whistles and the Environmental Health Officer’s recommendation, and explained the proposed mitigation. The committee also heard the claimant’s submissions and imposed a condition preventing competitive matches after 7 pm.
2. The court applied the approach in Oxton Farms, Samuel Smiths Old Brewery (Tadcaster) v Selby District Council [1997] EWCA Civ 4004: intervention requires the report’s overall effect significantly to mislead the committee about material matters which remain uncorrected. The technical dispute about modelling methodology did not meet that threshold. The character of sporting noise, including shouting, whistles and spectators, was sufficiently familiar for the committee to assess it as a matter of planning judgment.
3. The Environmental Health Officer’s concerns were not misrepresented. The later response from the senior officer disagreed with the claimant’s continued objection to continuous modelling, subject to consideration of duration and time of day. Ground 2 therefore failed.
4. Whistle condition. The reasons for rejecting a condition prohibiting whistles were rational. Enforcement would be difficult because the pitch formed part of wider playing fields, and it would be unreasonable to restrict whistles on the new pitch while leaving them unrestricted elsewhere. Ground 1 was unarguable.
5. Community use condition. The final sentence of condition 7 was unintelligible and unenforceable. Following R (Nicholson) v Allerdale BC and M Sport Ltd [2015] EWHC 2510 (Admin), the appropriate course was to adjourn formal judgment so that an application could be made under section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to correct the wording. Applying R (Hunt) v North Somerset Council [2015] 1 WLR 3575, the court made a declaration that the claim succeeded to that limited extent, but refused to quash the planning permission. Costs were adjourned.

Not stated in the judgment.