Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government & Anor

Where a strategic development allocation requires comprehensive delivery and proportionate contributions towards necessary infrastructure, the absence of an adopted masterplan does not remove that policy requirement. A decision-maker must consider whether the individual proposal should make some contribution to infrastructure serving the allocation as a whole. It is insufficient to assess the proposal only by reference to its stand-alone effects, including whether its residual highway impacts are severe under national policy. The decision-maker must also consider the proposal’s role in delivering and mitigating the strategic allocation and then conduct the planning balance. A contribution may be rejected as insufficiently justified under the statutory and policy tests, but that does not answer the separate question whether some contribution is required by the development plan.

Peel NRE Ltd applied for outline permission for industrial and distribution development within the New Carrington strategic allocation in the Places for Everyone Joint Development Plan Document. Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council refused permission because Peel declined to make a contribution towards allocation-wide infrastructure.

On appeal, an Inspector allowed the appeal. He found that the proposed contribution was not justified under the relevant national policy tests and assessed the highway effects of the proposal alone. He did not determine whether some proportionate contribution was nevertheless required by the development plan in the absence of an adopted masterplan. The Council sought statutory review of the Secretary of State’s decision on six grounds.

1. Claim allowed in part. The statutory review succeeded on Grounds 1, 2, 3 and 6. Grounds 4 and 5 failed. The Inspector’s decision was quashed.
2. Policy JPA30, read with the related infrastructure policies, required development of the New Carrington allocation to proceed through coordinated and comprehensive planning with proportionate contributions towards necessary infrastructure. The final sentence of Criterion 1 was a substantive policy requirement directed to the allocation as a whole. It did not depend upon the prior adoption of the masterplan.
3. The Inspector was entitled to give little weight to the Council’s Interim Planning Strategy and New Carrington Developer Contributions Formula. Their lack of consultation, viability testing and detail justified that planning judgment. He was also entitled to conclude that the specific sum sought did not satisfy the national policy tests reflected in Regulation 122(2) of the Community Infrastructure Regulations 2010.
4. That conclusion did not resolve the further issue required by the development plan: whether the proposal should make some proportionate contribution towards allocation-wide infrastructure. By stopping after rejecting the Council’s calculation, the Inspector failed to understand and grapple with a clear and material policy requirement. That omission was also irrational because it left a critical gap in the reasoning.
5. The Inspector was entitled, and required, to assess the proposal’s stand-alone highway effects under paragraph 116 of the National Planning Policy Framework. But that assessment could not replace consideration of the proposal’s contribution to the cumulative effects of the allocation and to the delivery of the infrastructure contemplated by the development plan. The planning balance had to address both matters.
6. The Inspector was not required to express the weight attached to the development plan breach mathematically. Read fairly and as a whole, the decision adequately explained the balance on that issue. Nor was he obliged to address the suggested repayment provision after finding that the contribution itself was unjustified.

The judgment describes an appeal to an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State, who allowed the appeal and granted planning permission by decision letter dated 22 July 2025. The High Court subsequently quashed that decision on statutory review.