Aireborough Neighbourhood Development Forum v Leeds City Council & Ors

A substantial reduction in an emerging housing requirement may constitute a fundamental change requiring a fresh assessment of reasonable alternatives under the SEA Regulations. An obvious option, such as suspending a plan pending resolution of a related review, should be transparently assessed and consulted upon. However, consultation defects may attract no relief where the outcome would inevitably have been the same. Inspectors must give intelligible and adequate reasons on the principal controversial issues, including whether exceptional circumstances justify Green Belt release, why sites are assessed by separate housing-market areas, and how the housing supply figures support the release. A material error in the supply figures, capable of eliminating the numerical need for Green Belt release, is an error of law.

The claimant challenged Leeds City Council’s adoption of the Site Allocations Plan under section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The Plan allocated housing land, including land released from the Green Belt, while a Core Strategy Selective Review was progressing towards a substantially lower housing requirement.

The challenge alleged breaches of the strategic environmental assessment requirements, inadequate reasons for Green Belt release and the use of housing-market areas, breach of the sustainable-development duty, and errors concerning housing supply and proposed main modifications. The central issues were whether the Inspectors had lawfully justified the Green Belt releases, assessed reasonable alternatives and consultation, and used accurate supply figures.

1. Grounds Three and Four succeeded. The Inspectors treated the absolute housing need in the adopted Core Strategy as the justification for Green Belt release. They did not explain why exceptional circumstances continued to exist despite the substantially lower emerging requirement. The discrepancy was a principal important controversial issue. The reasons were therefore inadequate under the principles in South Bucks District Council v Porter (No 2) and CPRE v Waverley DC [2019] EWCA Civ 1826.
2. The Inspectors also failed to explain why Green Belt sites were assessed within each housing-market characteristic area rather than across Leeds as a whole. A pro rata or “fair shares” approach might have been lawful, but the necessary planning reasoning was not set out. That failure was an error of law.
3. The substantial reduction in the housing requirement, from 4,700 to 3,247 dwellings per year, was a fundamental change requiring consideration of reasonable alternatives under regulation 12(2) of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004. Suspending the SAP pending the CSSR was an obvious potential alternative. Nevertheless, no relief was granted on this aspect because the claimant knew of and argued for that option, and the outcome would inevitably have been the same. The approach in Walton v Scottish Ministers [2013] PTSR 51 and R (Champion) v North Norfolk DC [2015] 1 WLR 3710 applied.
4. The assessment of sites within individual HMCAs was not itself irrational. There were legitimate possible advantages in avoiding delay and securing a geographical spread of housing, but the Council and Inspectors had failed to give adequate reasons for adopting that approach.
5. There was a material error of fact in the housing-supply calculation. The Inspectors stated that they had used the most up-to-date figures, but failed to account for increased permissions and large windfalls. Correcting the figures would have eliminated the numerical need for the Green Belt releases, or materially reduced it. The error was therefore material and amounted to an error of law.
6. The sustainable-development challenge and the challenge based on the corrected typographical error in the main modifications failed. Sustainable development involved broad planning judgment, and the corrected error caused no prejudice.

This was a first-instance judicial review claim. The judgment does not state any earlier appellate decision in the same proceedings.