Supreme Court to hand down judgment over council rule on councillor voting and deferred planning applications

The Supreme Court will next week hand down its much anticipated ruling in a dispute about whether Tower Hamlets Council was entitled to make a rule that only councillors who had been present when a planning application had previously been considered could vote on deferred applications.

The judgment will be handed down on Wednesday (26 March).

The case centres on a planning application, which first came before the council's development committee in April 2021, to redevelop part of the old Truman Brewery Site on Brick Lane in East London.

Five members of the committee were present at the committee meeting. The committee voted unanimously to defer consideration of the proposal.

The committee would next consider the planning application in September 2021. However, by that point, the composition of the committee had changed since the April 2021 meeting.

The council's standing orders provided that where a planning application is deferred, and its consideration recommences at a subsequent meeting, only members present at the previous meeting will be able to vote on the application.

In accordance with that rule, it was announced at the beginning of the 14 September 2021 meeting that only councillors who were present at the meeting on 27 April 2021 could vote on the planning application.

The committee resolved to grant planning permission by a vote of two to one.

The appellant, the Spitalfields Historic Building Trust, then applied for judicial review of the decision on the ground that it had been unlawful to exclude committee members from voting at the September meeting if they had not been present at the April meeting.

The High Court refused the application, leading the appellant to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

In The Spitalfields Historic Building Trust, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough Of Tower Hamlets [2023] EWCA Civ 917, Sir Keith Lindblom, Senior President of Tribunals, said: "It is common ground between the parties, and I agree, that it was not irrational for the council to restrict voting on deferred applications to the members present at the first meeting at which such an application has been considered.

"The central dispute in the case is whether, despite this being a rational provision to put in place as a standing order, to do so was nevertheless ultra vires because it lay outside the council's power under paragraph 42 of Schedule 12 to the [Local Government Act 1972] to use standing orders to regulate its own' proceedings and business'."

He dismissed the appeal after accepting that the 1972 Act empowered the council lawfully to make a standing order in the form of the restriction on voting.

The Spitalfields Historic Building Trust subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court.

Lord Reed, Lord Sales, Lord Hamblen, Lady Rose and Lord Richards heard the case on 25 July 2024.

See also: The power to regulate proceedings and place restrictions on councillor voting - Philip McCourt’s analysis of the Court of Appeal case.