Welsh council defeats legal challenge to grant of planning permission for caravan site extension

The High Court has rejected all seven grounds argued by a local campaign group against a decision by Pembrokeshire County Council to allow the extension of a caravan site.

SPVRG brought the judicial review before Mrs Justice Steyn over a caravan park at Heritage Park, Narbeth.

Its owners had secured consent to vary two planning conditions. One specified that none of the 29 in a former craft village car park could be twin-unit caravans, so as to limit the visual impact of the development.

The other was that a car park should be built and made available for public use prior to the occupation of any of the 29 caravans, to ensure adequate parking provision.

Site operators sought to remove the first of these and to vary the second so that more caravans could be occupied before completion of the car park.

Pembrokeshire gave consent in November 2020 and in January 2021 SPVRG sent a pre-action letter after which the council reconsidered the matter but upheld its original decision.

In SPVRG Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v Pembrokeshire County Council [2022] EWHC 143 (Admin) Steyn J allowed the seven grounds to be argued, which largely concerned alleged lack of rationality and failures to follow policy.

She found against the group on all of them and concluded the council had been entitled to reach the decision it did.

Mark Smulian