High Court rejects statutory review challenge over dismissal by inspector of appeal over planning application for 140-home scheme
The High Court has dismissed a challenge by developer Bewley Homes to a planning inspector’s rejection of its appeal against Waverley Borough Council’s refusal to give planning consent for 140 homes in Farnham.
In Bewley Homes PLC v Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities & Anor [2024] EWHC 1166 Mr Justice Holgate criticised parts of Bewley’s case as “confusing and inappropriate” and said it involved “an obvious distortion of national policy”.
Bewley argued the inspector misinterpreted paragraph 81 of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) by stating that its 'principal focus’ was on business investment, expansion and adaption.
The developer argued the paragraph dealt with economic benefits of any kind from a project, including residential development.
It also said the inspector erred by giving only moderate weight to the economic benefits of the proposed development, rather than ‘significant weight’ .
Holgate J said: “In my judgment there is no reason why a decision-maker should not evaluate the weight to be attached to the economic benefits of a development as 'very substantial' in one case or ‘moderate' in another…or even ‘minor’ or ‘insignificant'.
“NPPF 2021 does not compel decision-makers to do something absurd, namely to attribute the same level of weight, ‘significant', to economic benefits from any proposed development, irrespective of the merits of the economic case, or even where the developer provides no information on the level of those benefits, as happened in Bewley's appeal.”
He went on: “It is confusing and inappropriate to suggest, as Bewley does, that a decision-maker must apply ‘significant weight’ to his evaluation of the nature and degree of economic benefit from a proposed development, before he can arrive at a final weighting for that factor in the planning balance.”
Bewley had tried to argue ‘significant weight' is mandated by the NPPF for any economic benefit, “even though no evidence is given about the level of that benefit (or its effect in relation to the economy and its requirements), and even if a decision-maker would consider that benefit to be relatively small,” the judge said.
“This involves an obvious distortion of national policy for which there is no conceivable justification.”
Holgate J dismissed a second ground that other inspectors had interpreted the NPPF as directing decision-makers to apply significant weight to all case-specific economic benefits.
He said: “As I have explained under ground 1, that interpretation of para. 81 of NPPF 2021 is incorrect as a matter of law. It follows that ground 2 falls away.
“The inspector who decided Bewley's appeal was under no legal obligation to deal with those other appeal decisions [raised by Bewley] because, in so far as they were said to be material, they involved that same error of law.”
Mark Smulian
