Council defeats legal challenge over permission for 150-home scheme on Green Belt land

A local amenity group has lost a judicial review brought against St Albans City and District Council over planning consent for a 150-home residential development on Green Belt land.

In Save North St Albans Green Belt & Ors, R (On the Application Of) v Hunston Properties Ltd & Ors [2022] EWHC 2087 (Admin) Mrs Justice Lang ruled against all three grounds argued by Save North St Albans Green Belt.

It had objected to planning consent for 150 homes at Sewell Park. The group argued that advice to the Planning Referrals Committee in an officer’s report significantly misled councillors about the basis on which it was justifiable to depart from previous decisions refusing planning permission at this site.

The group also argued that the council was under a duty to give reasons for its decision and those in the officer’s report were inadequate.

Its third ground was that the report relied on material in support of an earlier proposal for only 132 dwellings and so councillors were misled as the density figure given was inaccurate.

St Albans countered that the officer’s report was not factually wrong, was a matter of planning judgment and was not seriously or significantly misleading,

Lang J said the officer's failure to remind councillors in one part of the report of the differences between the earlier application and the latest one “was not seriously misleading in a material way which could have made a difference to the committee's decision.

“The information was elsewhere in the officer’s report, and I consider that the lesser impacts of a smaller development would have been obvious to members,” the judge said.

"It is possible that members were aware of the previous applications for planning permission at this site, and the reasons for refusal, prior to receiving the officer’s report, as part of their local knowledge.”

She said a dispute as to whether the report should have rated harm to the Green Belt as ‘significant’ rather than ‘low to moderate', “falls squarely within the scope of the officer's planning judgment, and it cannot be challenged in this court”.

Lang J held that St Albans was not under a statutory duty to give reasons for the planning permission, and the case did not fall among those where councillors must give reasons “because here the members accepted the recommendation of the planning officer to grant planning permission. It can be assumed that members granted permission for the reasons set out in the officer’s report.”

The judge also dismissed the point about material relating to the earlier 132 homes scheme.

She said: “It was not irrational for the officer to conclude that the information provided in support of the application enabled a judgment to be reached on the acceptability of a 150 dwelling scheme”.

“This was an outline application with all matters reserved except for access. Therefore, the precise form of the development would be determined at reserved matters stage.”

Commenting on the case, Paul Stinchcombe QC of 39 Essex Chambers, who appeared for interested party Hunston Properties, said St Albans did not have an up-to-date local plan and had only 2.5 years of housing land supply.

Mr Stinchcombe said the council had decided that despite having rejected earlier applications to build on the site it had now found the planning benefits of meeting unmet housing needs amounted to ‘very special circumstances’ justifying inappropriate development in the Green Belt.

Mark Smulian