WHITLEY PARISH COUNCIL (R on the application of) v NORTH YORKSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

For Green Belt purposes, a development must be assessed as a whole when deciding whether it is inappropriate. That does not prevent the decision-maker from analysing separate elements to identify the overall harm and assess whether very special circumstances exist. The statutory and policy balance includes both Green Belt harm and any other harm arising from the proposal. Mitigation may reduce the weight of harm, but does not remove it from the balance.

Planning officers’ reports must be read fairly and as a whole, with reasonable benevolence and regard to the knowledge of committee members. The question is whether the report materially misled them on a matter bearing on the decision. The weight given to a planning policy is a matter of planning judgment, and a report may recommend that a policy receives no weight where that represents the officer’s properly explained professional judgment.

The claimant, a parish council, sought judicial review of the defendant local planning authority’s grant of permission to the interested party for the extraction and processing of pulverised fuel ash from a large ash-disposal site in the Green Belt. The proposal included associated buildings, highway works, processing facilities and restoration measures.

Six grounds alleged errors in the officer’s report concerning the treatment of the development as a whole, the Green Belt balance, a saved waste-policy requirement concerning the Best Practicable Environmental Option, alternatives, the distinction between the development plan and emerging policy, and compliance with a local economic-growth policy. The central issues were whether the report materially misled the committee and whether any established error justified quashing the permission.

Claim dismissed. The officer’s report, read as a whole, lawfully supported the grant of permission.

1. Green Belt assessment. Kemnal Manor established that, when deciding whether development is inappropriate, the proposal must be considered as a single development and not divided into acceptable and unacceptable parts. The report applied that principle. It correctly treated PFA extraction as inappropriate development because it was not mineral extraction within the relevant exception. The report’s separate analysis of the built element was permissible: it helped identify the overall harm and did not give that element a free-standing exemption from the very special circumstances test.
2. Very special circumstances. The report expressly considered harm to the Green Belt and other harm, including highways, amenity, landscape, visual effects and traffic. The fact that conditions or obligations could mitigate harm did not mean that the harm was ignored. A planning report need not analyse issues in a rigidly linear sequence. It must be read in context and as a whole, although that approach cannot cure a clear internal contradiction or a conclusion shown to have been finally reached before later material was considered.
3. Weight and alternatives. The officer was entitled, as a matter of planning judgment, to advise that no weight should be given to the Best Practicable Environmental Option limb of the saved waste policy because it was no longer part of national waste policy. The report did not materially mislead the committee. Alternatives generally need be considered only in exceptional circumstances; the proposed alternative transport arrangements had in any event been examined.
4. Development plan and local policy. The report accurately identified the development plan and separately described the emerging joint plan as an emerging policy source. The inclusion of the emerging policies in a concluding list was an infelicity, not a material error, particularly given the report’s earlier explanations and the committee minutes. The conclusion that the proposal complied overall with policy SP13 was a matter of planning judgment, supported by mitigation and restoration controls.
5. Section 31(2A). It was unnecessary to apply the substantial-difference test. Had any errors in Grounds 1 to 5 been established, the court would have been satisfied that minor corrections would have been highly unlikely to change the outcome.