CPRE Surrey & Anor v Waverley Borough Council & Ors

In a challenge to a local plan, assessing objectively assessed housing need and distributing a neighbouring authority’s unmet need involve planning judgment. The assessment is not an exact science and may be based on imperfect or incomplete evidence. A local plan inspector need not determine the neighbouring authority’s ultimate housing requirement as if conducting that authority’s own plan examination, provided the exercise is proportionate and lawful. A reasons challenge succeeds only where the reasoning is unintelligible or inadequate on the principal controversial issues. The court must not substitute its own planning judgment. Relief may also be refused where the challenged allocation was independently justified. A planning permission challenge founded solely on an unsuccessful local plan challenge necessarily fails.

Three linked claims concerned the allocation of Dunsfold Aerodrome in Waverley Borough Council’s Local Plan Part One and planning permission for a new settlement there.

CPRE Surrey and POW Campaign Limited challenged adoption of policies under section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, arguing that the Inspector had unlawfully assessed Waverley’s objectively assessed need and Woking’s unmet housing need. POW also challenged the Secretary of State’s decision under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to grant permission for the development, contending that the permission relied on unlawful local plan policies.

The central questions were whether the Inspector’s approach to Woking’s unmet need was legally flawed, whether his reasons were adequate, and what consequences any error would have had for the local plan and planning permission.

1. Local plan challenges dismissed. The Inspector and Waverley Borough Council had not erred in law in adopting the challenged policies.

2. The Inspector had to establish a housing figure for Waverley and ensure that the plan sought to meet objectively assessed need and relevant unmet need within the housing market area. He was not conducting Woking’s local plan examination and could not realistically determine Woking’s eventual housing requirement on the full evidence that would later be available. The exercise was proportionate to his statutory task.

3. Housing need assessment is not an exact science. It involves planning judgment on material that may be imperfect or incomplete. The Inspector was entitled to use the SHMA figure for Woking while recognising that a future assessment might produce a lower figure. He was not legally required to recalculate Woking’s OAN using the later household projections, investigate every possible source of supply, or undertake the detailed arithmetical exercise advanced by the claimants.

4. The allocation of 50 per cent of Woking’s identified unmet need to Waverley, producing 83 dwellings per annum, was a broad but lawful planning judgment. Waverley was materially less constrained than Woking and Guildford. There was no requirement for a precise mathematical apportionment or for the plan to contain a review mechanism addressing the uncertainty.

5. The Inspector’s reasons were adequate. A local plan examination report is addressed to a knowledgeable audience and need not contain the level of detail expected in a major section 78 inquiry. The report made the central justification for the housing requirement sufficiently clear.

6. Even if there had been an error concerning unmet need, the Dunsfold allocation would not have been quashed. It had been justified before the additional unmet-need figure was introduced and independently of the final overall housing requirement. The court would also have declined to quash policy ALH1 because the disputed contribution was only a relatively small part of the requirement and Waverley would inevitably have to meet a significant proportion of Woking’s unmet need.

7. The section 288 claim was parasitic on the section 113 claims and therefore failed. The court declined to express an opinion on the separate question whether section 113(2) would preclude such a challenge if the local plan policies had been quashed, leaving that issue for a case in which it arose.