Norton St. Philip Parish Council v Mendip District Council

A development plan must be interpreted according to its adopted wording and, where relevant, the examination report that informed it. A requirement for additional housing across a district is not transformed into a requirement for allocation in one sector merely because that sector is mentioned as a possible location. The statutory sustainability appraisal must identify, describe and evaluate reasonable alternatives, including materially different locations for proposed allocations. An authority cannot avoid that duty by treating its preferred allocation policy as an objective of the plan. A failure to consider alternatives caused by a legal misinterpretation is not merely an evaluative planning judgment.

The claimant challenged Mendip District Council’s adoption of Local Plan Part II under section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The challenge concerned allocations for 505 additional dwellings, including sites at Midsomer Norton, Radstock, Norton St Philip and Beckington.

The central issues were whether the examining Inspector and the Council had misinterpreted Local Plan Part I as requiring the 505 dwellings to be allocated in the north-east of the district, and whether the sustainability appraisal unlawfully failed to consider reasonable alternatives elsewhere in the district. The claimant also challenged the treatment of proportionate growth and the rationality of two village allocations.

1. Ground 1 succeeded. Local Plan Part I required the additional 505 dwellings to be distributed in accordance with the district-wide spatial strategy. The references to possible allocations near Midsomer Norton and Radstock required those locations to be considered, but did not direct development there, create a preference for them, or confine the area of search to the north-east.
2. The Inspector’s report on Local Plan Part I stated that the additional housing could include land adjacent to Midsomer Norton and Radstock, but that there was no evidence requiring it to be directed to one location. The Inspector examining Local Plan Part II therefore erred by treating the earlier report and Local Plan Part I as creating a “strategic expectation”, “strategic direction” or “strategic steer” towards the north-east. The Council adopted the same erroneous interpretation.
3. Ground 2 succeeded. Regulation 12(2)(b) of the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004 required reasonable alternatives to the proposed north-east allocations to be identified, described and evaluated. The Council’s failure to consider sites elsewhere in the district resulted from its legal misinterpretation and was not a protected evaluative planning judgment. Consultation at the examination hearing could not substitute for a compliant environmental report and consultation process.
4. The Council could not treat an allocation policy as an objective of the plan so as to exclude competing locations from the concept of reasonable alternatives. That would undermine the statutory requirement to assess alternatives to proposed policies.
5. Grounds 3 and 4 failed. The Inspector had applied the proportionate-growth criterion and there was no positive indication that it had been ignored in relation to Beckington or Norton St Philip. The challenge to irrationality did not overcome the high public-law threshold.
6. The adoption of policies MN1, MN2, MN3, NSP1 and BK1 was unlawful because the Inspector’s recommendation was vitiated by the errors on grounds 1 and 2. The challenge succeeded solely on those grounds.

First-instance statutory review. No prior appellate decision is stated in the judgment.