The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, R (on the application of) v Transport for London

Works carried out by a highway authority for a road improvement fall outside the planning-permission requirement only if they do not have significant adverse effects on the environment. The assessment concerns the works constituting the relevant project as a whole, although separate works or schemes may require separate consideration.

Whether effects are significant is a matter of planning judgment. The court reviews the decision for legal error or irrationality, rather than substituting its own environmental assessment. Declaratory relief may also be refused where proceedings are delayed, the declaration would intrude upon the statutory planning regime, or substantial public and third-party interests would be disrupted.

The claimant, a representative body for London licensed taxi drivers, challenged Transport for London’s construction of phase one of the East-West Cycle Superhighway without planning permission. The works involved a segregated cycle route, changes to road layouts, junctions, traffic signals, parking and loading arrangements, and associated highway works.

The central issues were whether the works constituted development under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, whether the highway-works exception applied, and whether relief should be granted if planning permission was required.

1. The claim was dismissed. The works were carried out within road boundaries by Transport for London acting as highway authority. They were improvement works, rather than works exclusively for maintenance, since a cycle track constitutes an improvement to a highway under section 65 of the Highways Act 1980.
2. The expression “any works” in section 55(2)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 referred to the entirety of phase one of the project. The court therefore assessed the environmental effects of the phase as a whole, rather than isolating individual elements. A different conclusion might arise for particular minor works or for other schemes.
3. The Environmental Evaluation Report was not an environmental impact assessment under the relevant regulations, but it contained detailed modelling of air quality and noise. Read fairly and as a whole, it showed localised beneficial and adverse effects but did not establish a significant adverse environmental effect from the project as a whole.
4. Whether the proposals had significant adverse environmental effects involved planning judgment. Applying R v Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council ex parte Milne [2001] 81 P&CR 27, the court’s task was to determine whether Transport for London had erred in law or acted irrationally. It had done neither. Planning permission was therefore not required for phase one as a whole.
5. Had relief been necessary, it would have been refused. The planning legislation provided a comprehensive enforcement code, and the court should not assume the functions of local planning authorities: see Pioneer Aggregates v Secretary of State for the Environment [1985] 1 AC 132. The proposed declarations also required unresolved evaluative judgments and, in one version, raised screening and environmental-statement issues that had not been fully argued.
6. The proceedings were brought substantially out of time. The claimant knew of Transport for London’s position by January 2015, but did not commence proceedings until August 2015, after substantial construction and expenditure. In light of the project’s scale, public expenditure, third-party interests and the need for certainty, declaratory relief would not have been just or convenient. The principles concerning discretionary declaratory relief and delay in R (Hunt) v North Somerset Council [2015] UKSC 51, R (Hammerton) v London Underground Limited [2002] EWHC 2307 and R (Champion) v North Norfolk District Council [2015] UKSC 52 supported that conclusion.