Stonegate Homes Ltd & Anor, R (On the Application Of) v Horsham District Council

In preparing a neighbourhood plan, the authority must assess reasonable alternatives under the strategic environmental assessment regime on an accurate and comparable evidential basis. Local opinion or assertion cannot justify an absolute conclusion about environmental or highways effects where relevant technical evidence points the other way.

A decision-maker is not bound to follow an earlier planning appeal decision arising from an individual site. The relevance and weight of that decision depend on the different statutory functions and contexts. It must nevertheless be taken into account where it materially bears on the plan-making assessment.

The local planning authority must independently consider whether making the plan would comply with EU obligations and must give adequate reasons for that conclusion.

The claimants, developers promoting land at Sandgate Nursery, sought judicial review of Horsham District Council’s decision to make the Henfield Neighbourhood Plan after a referendum. The plan directed substantial development towards the eastern side of Henfield and excluded further significant development on its western side.

The claim challenged the assessment of reasonable alternatives, the delineation of the Built-Up Area Boundary, and the adequacy of the reasons given for concluding that the plan complied with EU obligations. The challenge arose under section 61N of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

1. Claim allowed. The making of the Henfield Neighbourhood Plan was incompatible with EU obligations and the Council’s decision to make it was irrational.
2. The plan-making exercise involved comparative judgments about the spatial distribution of development. It was materially different from deciding whether an individual planning application was acceptable. The earlier Barratt appeal decision was therefore not binding, and the consistency principle in North Wiltshire District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and Fox Strategic Land & Property Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government did not require the plan to follow it.
3. However, applying the approach explained in R (Evans) v Attorney General, the relevance and weight of a previous adjudicative assessment depended on the statutory context, the nature of the assessment, the status of the decision-maker and the procedures followed. The Barratt decision and the current highways information were material and could not simply be disregarded.
4. The rejection of western sites in the strategic environmental assessment was based on the assertion that further development would create unsustainable pressure on the local road system. The workshop record, local opinion and consultation responses did not provide an adequate evidential foundation. The available highways evidence instead indicated that the relevant sites did not create insuperable highways objections.
5. Under Article 5 of Directive 2001/42/EC, reasonable alternatives had to be identified, described and evaluated on an accurate and comparable basis. Qualitative assessment was permissible, but it could not amount to guesswork. The failure to grapple with changed highways information also meant that the assessment was not properly iterative.
6. The Built-Up Area Boundary was inextricably linked to the spatial strategy. Its environmental effects and reasonable alternatives had not been assessed, and no adequate explanation was given for excluding the western Barratt site while extending the boundary to include land east of Manor Close.
7. The independent examiner and the Council failed to explain with sufficient rigour why the plan complied with EU obligations. The Council’s statutory duty to consider those obligations remained independent of the referendum result. The reasons given under regulation 19 of the Neighbourhood Planning (General) Regulations 2012 were inadequate.

First-instance judicial review claim. No earlier appellate decision in the same proceedings was stated.