District and parish in court challenge to grant of planning permission to free school

Two councils are to challenge the Communities Secretary's grant of planning permission to a Sikh free school.

Eric Pickles overturned a planning inspector’s decision and approved the Khalsa School’s continued operation from a former office building at Stoke Poges.

South Buckinghamshire District Council and Stoke Poges Parish Council are to take him to the High Court arguing that he acted unreasonably.

Khalsa has operated from the building but wanted its use to be allowed permanently and to expand from its present limited complement to one of 900 students.

The Department for Education applied to South Buckinghamshire for prior approval consent to enable the school to continue to operate from the site under general permitted development rights. 

South Buckinghamshire refused and the DfE appealed, but a planning inspector in July recommended refusal on the grounds of the noise nuisance caused to local residents by the school.

Mr Pickles overruled this, arguing in his decision letter: “The secretary of state…concludes that, although the increased noise levels experienced by the local residents as a result of the school’s operation need to be given significant weight on one side of the balance, they would not be of such severity over and above those generated by any other beneficial use of the site that the adverse impacts of allowing the state funded school to go ahead in accordance with the permitted development rights granted to it would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits when assessed against the policies in the framework taken as a whole.”

Stoke Poges Parish Council said it “argues that this decision is unlawful on a number of grounds, and expects the challenge to be considered by the High Court late this year or early next”.

Roger Reed, South Buckinghamshire’s cabinet member for sustainable development, said: "We do not undertake legal action lightly. Eric Pickles has made a bad decision and we need to take action. 

“The legal challenge is the best way of reversing the school’s adverse impact in terms of additional noise for our residents.”

Mark Smulian