CEG Land Promotions II Ltd v Secretary of State for Housing Communities And Local Government

National planning policy on valued landscapes must be read with the development plan. Where up-to-date development plan policies comprehensively implement the relevant national policy, the same landscape harm must not be counted twice, nor may the national policy be used twice to give additional weight to the same harm. The assessment of a valued landscape is not confined to land within a formal designation. A development site may form an integral part of a wider landscape whose characteristics give it value. The court should avoid over-analysing an inspector’s decision letter and should read it as a whole.

The claimant challenged the Secretary of State’s dismissal of its appeal against the refusal of planning permission for up to 175 dwellings and associated development adjoining Wendover. The Inspector concluded that the local planning authority lacked a five-year housing land supply, so the tilted balance in paragraph 14 of the National Planning Policy Framework applied. She found substantial landscape and settlement harm, including harm to a valued landscape, and dismissed the appeal.

The claimant challenged the Inspector’s approach to paragraph 109 of the Framework. It argued that the Inspector had double-counted landscape harm and had unlawfully treated the appeal site as part of a valued landscape by relying on its wider surroundings.

1. Ground 1A dismissed. Paragraph 109 of the National Planning Policy Framework operates both in plan-making and, where relevant policies are absent, silent or out of date, in development control. The Inspector had to consider whether the landscape was valued and whether paragraph 109 was a policy indicating that development should be restricted for paragraph 14 purposes.
2. Where development plan landscape policies are up to date, consistent with paragraph 109 and comprehensive in their coverage, paragraph 109 supplies no additional development-control policy permitting the same harm to be counted again. Such double-counting would be illogical. Similarly, once proper weight has been given to development plan policies because they embody paragraph 109, the Framework policy cannot be used a second time to increase the weight given to the same policy breach.
3. The Inspector’s decision letter, read as a whole, did not double-count the harm. Her reference to the erosion of part of a valued landscape reflected the separate requirement to consider paragraph 109 and did not add a distinct category of harm to that already assessed under the development plan. The overall conclusion in DL [146] confirmed that reading.
4. Ground 1 dismissed. A valued landscape is not confined to land bearing a statutory or non-statutory designation. Nor did Stroud District Council v SSCLG and Gladman Developments Ltd establish that only the physical characteristics of the development site, considered in isolation, could be examined. The relevant landscape may be wider than the red-line site, and the site may be assessed in situ as an integral part of its surroundings.
5. The Inspector was entitled to conclude that the site formed part of a valued landscape by considering its relationship with the wider vale landscape, its rural setting, views, adjoining SSSI and the setting of the AONB. The claim was dismissed on both grounds.

First-instance judicial review claim. The Inspector’s decision dated 9 October 2017 was challenged in the Administrative Court. The claim was dismissed.