WHITE WALTHAM AIRFIELD LIMITED (R on the application of) v ROYAL BOROUGH OF WINDSOR AND MAIDENHEAD

In judicial review of a planning decision, the court reviews legality rather than planning merits. A planning authority may rely on a technical assessment where its methodology is rational and the material before the authority provides a reasonable basis for decision-making. Further inquiries are required only where the inquiry was so inadequate that no reasonable authority could regard the available material as sufficient.

Planning officers’ reports are read with reasonable benevolence. A report is unlawful only if it materially misleads the committee on a matter bearing upon the decision. The Planning Practice Guidance is guidance, not a binding code prescribing rigid assessment steps. Development plan noise thresholds remain the statutory starting point, but more recent guidance and technical material may be material considerations. The claim was dismissed.

The claimant, owner and operator of White Waltham Airfield, sought judicial review of the defendant local planning authority’s decision to grant outline planning permission for up to 79 dwellings and a nursery beside the airfield.

The challenge concerned alleged failures to assess aircraft noise adequately, to consider the airfield’s permitted activities under the agent of change principle, and to apply current qualitative noise guidance alongside the local plan’s aircraft-noise thresholds. Permission to apply for judicial review had been granted on the papers. The central issue was whether the authority had committed a public law error in its assessment of noise and residential amenity.

1. Ground 1 dismissed. The officer’s report accurately summarised the claimant’s objections. The noise assessment monitored continuously over two days, including a day when the runway nearest the site was in use, and recorded both daytime and night-time noise events. No technical or scientific defect in its methodology was shown. The authority was entitled to regard the results as robust and to decide that no further inquiry was required. The high threshold in R (Hayes) v Wychavon DC [2019] PTSR 1163 was not met.
2. The report’s conclusions on noise, residential amenity and mitigation were planning judgments. The court would not substitute its own assessment for that of the decision-maker. Condition 23, requiring acoustic insulation and ventilation for habitable rooms, addressed internal noise.
3. The reasons challenge failed. There is no general common-law duty to give reasons for granting planning permission, subject to special circumstances identified in R (CPRE Kent) v Dover DC [2018] 1 WLR 108. Those circumstances did not arise, and the principal reasons were clear from the report and noise assessment.
4. Ground 2 dismissed. The authority was entitled to rely on the NPPF and PPG and was not required to reproduce their passages in the report. The PPG is practice guidance rather than a binding code. The approach in R (Solo Retail) v Torridge DC [2019] EWHC 489 (Admin) was preferred to that in R (Bent) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2017] EWHC 1366 (Admin). The authority had sufficient information, including local knowledge, objections and the technical assessment, to reach its decision.
5. Ground 3 dismissed. Local Plan Policy NAP2 was the correct statutory starting point under section 70(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The officer also had regard to the NPPF, PPG, BS8233 and WHO guidance. Applying the 54 dB outdoor assessment and the proposed internal mitigation involved planning judgment and disclosed no error of law.
6. The judicial review claim was dismissed. The claimant was ordered to pay the defendant’s agreed costs. The interested party’s application for costs was refused.

This was a first-instance judicial review claim. Permission to apply was granted on the papers by Timothy Mould QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge. The substantive claim was dismissed by the Planning Court.