High Court to hear judicial review of Local Plan brought by parish council in attempt to block construction of 27 dwellings

The High Court will this week hear a judicial review brought by Norton St Philip Parish Council which argues that Mendip District Council's decision to follow the recommendations of a planning inspector and approve a Local Plan was unlawful.

The challenge, which is to be heard from tomorrow (18 October), seeks to demonstrate that the inspector made errors in law or judgement in reaching his recommendations on the soundness of the local plan, which Mendip says was extensively considered at examination hearings before its adoption in December 2021.

In December 2014, the district council adopted the Mendip District Local Plan 2006-2029 Part I: Strategy and Policies (LPP1), which sets out how the council plans to develop the region over the next 15 years.

Part of the plan lays out the overall housing requirements and makes provision for an additional 505 dwellings "in the District", which it says a second local plan (LPP2) should address.

Paragraph 4.21 of LPP1 states that allocations for the 505 dwellings "may include land in the north/north-east of the District primarily adjacent to the towns of Radstock and Midsomer Norton".

The inspector's report acknowledged that the LPP1 states that the 505 dwellings are "to be allocated in the District". But he went on to say that "spreading any additional development generally across the District and not in the north-east of Mendip...would be contrary to the strategic thrust of paragraphs 4.21 and 4.7 in the LPP1, which focus on the need to consider making specific allocations with reference to the towns of Radstock and Midsomer Norton rather than distributing the additional development generally across the District".

"It is clear to me that the strategic direction in LPP1 requires the Council to consider development allocations to meet the needs in the north-east of the District", the inspector concluded.

Following this, Mendip adopted his recommendations and agreed to adopt LPP2 and to place the 505 dwellings within the north-east of the district, with 27 dwellings allocated to the Parish of Norton St Philip.

Norton St Philip then launched its judicial review challenge. 

According to the BBC Local Democracy Reporting Service, the High Court has agreed to hear the following three grounds:

• Ground 1 –The approach to the additional 505 dwellings and the need for main modifications to allocate further development in the north-east of the district was founded upon a misinterpretation of LPP1. "Namely, the Inspector wrongly considered that LPP1 created a 'strategic direction' or 'strategic expectation' that 505 additional dwellings should be allocated in the north-east part of the district."
• Ground 2 – Failure to consider reasonable alternatives to allocating additional 505 dwellings in the north-east of the district
• Ground 3 – Failure to have regard to the requirement for proportionate development in rural settlements and/or provide adequate reasons to explain how this had been taken into account.

Adam Carey