Developer in legal challenge to Local Plan over air quality measurement

Developer Muller Homes has launched a legal challenge to Cheshire East Council’s local plan over whether air quality was measured correctly.

The Local Plan was adopted in July and covers development in the area to 2030.

Adoption followed a tortuous process with 11 rounds of public consultation and some 60,000 comments made, the council said.

It allows for 1,800 homes a year and identifies more than 2,500 acres of land for housing.

The council was in July separately involved in a controversy over the falsification of air quality monitoring data used in granting some planning permissions.

It commissioned consultant Bureau Veritas, which reported that for some air quality monitoring tubes there had been “evidence of deliberate or systematic manipulation”.

In some cases exactly 10μg/m3 has been subtracted from several months’ worth of data, “and it is considered highly unlikely that this could be attributed to anything other than deliberate manipulation”, it said.

The report added: “The tubes that have been deliberately altered are spread over a wide geographical area, which implies that the manipulation was motivated by a general wish to reduce concentrations across the whole council administrative area, rather than by the wish to favour a specific set of planning applications.”

In some cases the discrepancy was enough that air quality assessments might change had they been conducted properly, it said.

A council statement said: “A legal challenge has been made to the adoption of the council’s local plan strategy [by] Muller Properties.

“Muller Properties are claiming that the council failed to take into account the issue relating to incorrect air quality data when adopting the local plan.”

Cheshire East said proceedings had been issued protectively, pending Muller Properties’ consideration of its response, “in which the authority explains that this issue had no effect on the plan process”.

The council said Muller’s action was “disappointing but Muller Properties have now had a full and robust response from us addressing the points they have raised.

“We are firm in our position that the incorrect air quality data would not have resulted in any changes to the local plan.”

Muller Properties declined to comment.

This is the second legal challenge this week to focus on air quality. Environmental campaigner Emily Shirley, advised by claimant law firm Leigh Day, has brought proceedings against Canterbury City Council over its adoption of the Canterbury District Local Plan.

Mark Smulian