Judge rejects bid by council to have permission for 90-home scheme quashed

West Berkshire Council has said it will accept a High Court judgment dismissing its appeal over the grant of planning permission for a development with 90 dwellings.

In June 2014 HDD Burghfield Common Limited submitted an initial application for 129 dwellings at Firlands Farm in Burghfield Common.

The council refused the application in October 2014. However, the developer appealed and an amended scheme for 90 dwellings was approved by a planning inspector in July last year.

In West Berkshire District Council v Secretary of State for Communities And Local Government & Anor [2016] EWHC 267 the local authority sought to have the inspector’s decision quashed.

It advanced four grounds of challenge to the inspector’s decision:

i) The inspector was wrong to treat the strategy and policies for housing set out in the Core Strategy as out of date. He was in effect questioning the three years given in the development plan for the claimant council to review its housing needs;

ii) He was wrong to identify the housing need figure as 833 dwellings per year, and to treat that figure as an absolute consideration rather than one that was a relative matter of weight;

iii) He was wrong to apply no weight to the housing land supply policies and little weight to the emerging DPD. In the circumstances, he failed to apply the correct planning tests, including how the overall planning balance applied;

iv) In the alternative, he had failed to give adequate reasons for this decision. This caused considerable prejudice to the council, given that this decision was relevant to all planning applications for housing development in the district.

However, Mr Justice Supperstone rejected the claim on all grounds.

West Berkshire said it was disappointed with the ruling but insisted that it would not have an impact on how the council processed planning applications “as any application must be determined based on the material considerations that exist at the time the decision is made”. 

It added: “Due to the publication of the new Strategic Market Housing Assessment and the Preferred Housing Sites Allocations DPD the policy position has moved on from June/July last year and planning officers will be making their decisions based on the latest evidence base.”

Cllr Alan Law, West Berkshire's Executive Member for Planning, said: "The council has reviewed this judgment and we're disappointed about its impact on Burghfield Common.

"However the good news is the judgment also highlights the need for our current up to date Housing Allocation Plan, which is in place to protect all communities from a planning free for all and to ensure that developers are not given a free reign on West Berkshire's countryside. 

"The council has worked hard over many years to prepare the Core Strategy and the Housing Site Allocations Development Plan Document and the recent Strategic Housing Market Assessment following stringent Government guidelines.”

Cllr Law added: "This decision is disappointing as far as Firlands is concerned but we believe it simply reflects a particular point in time and events have moved on since with the publication of the findings of the SHMA and the Proposed Submission Version of the Housing Site Allocations DPD.  

"Our legal advice is that this decision does not affect current or future planning applications."