Jaks Bars & Restaurants Limited v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government & Anor

In a planning challenge concerning late-night opening, a decision-maker must address the relationship between planning control and a parallel licensing regime where that relationship is materially relied upon. The existence of licensing control does not require planning issues to be left to the licensing authority. It does require a fact-sensitive planning judgment on whether, and to what extent, licensing can address the identified harm.

Where an expert report directly addresses the principal controversial issue, reasons must indicate how it was considered and balanced if the decision-maker rejects or gives it little weight. A witness statement may establish that material was considered, but it cannot ordinarily cure silence in the decision itself on the reasons for its treatment. A statutory planning decision should be quashed where the errors might have affected the outcome and caused substantial prejudice.

The claimant operated a restaurant and bar and applied under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to extend opening hours from 1 am to 2 am on Thursdays to Saturdays. The local planning authority refused permission because of anticipated noise and disturbance to residents. A Planning Inspector dismissed the claimant’s appeal.

The claimant challenged the Inspector’s decision under section 288 of the 1990 Act. It argued that the Inspector had failed to address a Licensing Impact Assessment, had failed to consider the role and responsiveness of the licensing regime, and had inadequately reasoned the refusal of a temporary permission. The central issues were whether the decision gave adequate reasons for its treatment of the evidence and whether it properly addressed the interaction between planning and licensing.

1. The claim succeeded on grounds 2 and 3. The Inspector’s decision was quashed. Grounds 1, 3A, 4, 5 and 6 failed.
2. The Licensing Impact Assessment was plainly material. It directly addressed the principal controversial issue: the effect of late-night dispersal on residential amenity. It contained evidence about management arrangements and expert assessment of their operation over five occasions. The Inspector was not required to accept it, but her decision was wholly silent on it. An informed reader could not know whether she rejected it, gave it no weight, or considered it irrelevant, or why it did not answer concerns identified in the decision.
3. The Inspector’s witness statement was admissible and established that the assessment had been considered and balanced. That answered the challenge that it had been left out of account. It did not answer the separate reasons challenge, because the decision itself remained silent on how the assessment affected the outcome.
4. Planning and licensing are overlapping statutory controls. Applying the approach in Gateshead MBC v Secretary of State for the Environment (1993) 67 P&CR 179, the planning decision-maker was not bound to leave the issue to licensing. However, given the claimant’s reliance on licensing as a responsive system capable of regulating dispersal, the Inspector had to consider whether, and to what extent, licensing could address the identified residential-amenity concerns. Her failure to address that question was an error of approach.
5. The temporary-permission challenge failed. Read with the Inspector’s findings on the deficiencies in the noise evidence, the statement that a temporary permission was inappropriate based on those findings was intelligible. The reference to the six tests for conditions was unclear as to which test was said to be unmet, but the essential reasoning was that a 12-month permission would not be reasonable while residential amenity was not satisfactorily protected.
6. The errors were material. The ability of licensing to respond to residential-amenity concerns, and the treatment of the Licensing Impact Assessment, might have affected the outcome. The threshold in Simplex v Secretary of State (1989) 57 P&CR 306 was not met, and the claimant had suffered substantial prejudice.

The planning merits were left open for redetermination.

This was a first-instance statutory challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The Planning Inspector’s decision dated 11 February 2025 dismissed the claimant’s planning appeal. The High Court quashed that decision. The planning appeal is to be redetermined.