Macintosh Village (Management) Limited, R (on the application of) v Manchester City Council

Planning officers’ advice vitiates a planning decision only where a material error remains uncorrected and materially misleads or misdirects the decision-maker. Reports must be read fairly, benevolently and as a whole.

An environmental statement is legally inadequate only where its deficiencies are so serious that it cannot reasonably be regarded as an environmental statement under the applicable regulations. Environmental impacts and mitigation must be assessed before permission is granted, but the assessment need not satisfy unrealistic expectations.

Private rights are not automatically material planning considerations. They may become material through the terms of an applicable planning policy. Whether a proposal is deliverable is generally an evaluative planning judgment, subject to public law standards of legality and reasonableness.

The claimant, a residents’ management company, challenged the Council’s grant of planning permission for a 55-storey student accommodation and workspace development involving the reconfiguration of an existing multi-storey car park.

The grounds concerned alleged misleading advice about access during construction, inadequacy of the amended environmental statement concerning dust and contamination, breach of the Public Sector Equality Duty concerning disabled parking and access, defective consultation, failure to send consultees a copy of the amended environmental statement, and failure properly to address private parking rights and deliverability.

The Court also considered an application to adduce further evidence and an application to amend the judicial review grounds.

1. Officer advice. Applying R (Mansell) v Tonbridge & Malling BC [2017] EWCA Civ 1314 and R v Durham County Council, ex p Lowther [2001] EWCA Civ 781, the Court reads an officer’s report with reasonable benevolence and as a whole. Intervention requires a material error which remains uncorrected and might have affected the decision. The advice about occasional access restrictions and planning condition 44 did not materially mislead the Committee.
2. Environmental statement. The amended environmental statement adequately addressed construction-phase dust and contamination. References to the local community and site visitors included car park users, and the proposed dust-management and construction-management measures provided relevant mitigation. The high threshold in R (Blewett) v Derbyshire County Council [2003] EWHC 2775 (Admin) was not met. There was no unlawful deferral of assessment as considered in Gillespie v First Secretary of State [2003] EWCA Civ 400.
3. Equality duty. The Council had due regard to the statutory equality criteria before and during the decision. The percentage of disabled spaces was maintained, disabled access was addressed in the report and planning conditions, and later implementation details did not amount to abdication or unlawful deferral.
4. Consultation and circulation. Representations submitted after the prescribed 30-day period were not representations duly made for the purposes of regulations 25 and 26 of the 2017 Regulations. Issuing the officer report before that deadline did not establish predetermination or a closed mind. A requirement to send a copy of additional environmental information did not necessarily require a hard copy; an attachment or direct hyperlink could comply. In any event, applying R (Champion) v North Norfolk District Council [2015] UKSC 52, no substantial prejudice was shown.
5. Private rights and deliverability. Deliverability under Policies H12 and EN2 was a material planning consideration meaning a sufficient prospect of practical implementation. Private parking rights were not, without more, independently material. Their relevance through the policy framework was a matter of evaluative judgment. The report fairly addressed the retained parking rights, access arrangements, available spaces and the developer’s track record. It did not materially misdirect the Committee.
6. The judicial review claim was dismissed. Permission to adduce the further evidence was granted in part. Permission to amend the grounds was refused. The claimant was ordered to pay the Council’s costs of £10,000. Permission to appeal was refused.

The judgment was a first-instance judicial review. Permission to bring the claim had been granted by the Court of Appeal on 19 May 2022. The High Court dismissed the claim and refused permission to appeal.