Housing planning news, December 2018

 

The statistics on net additional dwellings in completed in England from April 2017 to March 2018 have been published by the government. 

These figures show 222,194 additional dwellings were completed from April 2017 to March 2018, up 2.2% from 217,345 in 2016/17.  This marks the highest level of house building for a decade, and just 1,340 shy of the 2007/8 peak on the eve of the global recession.

Notwithstanding the availability of this data, and that the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) states that the Housing Delivery Test results would be published at a point in November 2018, the first Housing Delivery Test results were not published.

Lichfields has produced an interactive guide to help navigate the new figures.  This considers what the latest data on housing completions indicates about the make-up of house building across England, how this is affected by certain planning considerations,  and at a local authority level, how closely current housing delivery rates are likely to meet the Housing Delivery Test now and in 2020.

 

 

A recent High Court judgment has considered the lawfulness of a section 73 planning permission that necessitates a variation to the terms, or description of development, of the original (or an earlier) planning permission.

In Finney v Welsh Ministers, Carmarthenshire resident John Finney sought an order quashing a section 73 planning permission granted on appeal for (amongst other things) two wind turbines with a 125m blade height.  The description of development of the original 2016 planning permission begins “25 year operation of two wind turbines, with a tip height of up to 100m […]”.

The claim was made on the ground that:

“the Inspector should not have allowed the appeal because she had no power under section 73 to amend a condition pursuant to which a prior planning permission had been granted which had the effect of directly contradicting the description of the development permitted in that earlier permission. Further or alternatively, the Claimant asserts that the Inspector failed to consider at all (as she should have done in accordance with established legal principles) whether the application before her constituted a "fundamental alteration" of the prior permission”.

Judge Sir Wyn Williams considered leading authority R v Coventry City Council, ex p. Arrowcroft Group plc (2001) and also more recent (2017) cases; Wet Finishing Works v Taunton Deane BC (2018), and R (Vue Entertainment Ltd) v City of York Council .  He discussed the interpretation of and potential inconsistencies between these cases concluded that both 2017 cases applied the reasoning in Arrowcroft; notably ‘the Arrowcroft principle’ that under a section 73 application a local planning authority:

"is able to impose different conditions upon a new planning permission, but only if they are conditions which the council could lawfully have imposed upon the original planning permission in the sense that they do not amount to a fundamental alteration of the proposal put forward in the original application".

The judge decided:

“that the only proper interpretation of the judgment in Wet Finishing Works, is that a variation pursuant to section 73 can be lawful notwithstanding that it may necessitate a variation to the terms of the planning permission which preceded the section 73 application”

And that he was not minded to depart from this “persuasive authority”.  To accept the claimant’s argument would “lead to an over-technical and inflexible approach to the application of section 73”.

The judge also concluded that the Inspector had considered whether the s73 application constituted a fundamental alteration to the original proposal, but that even if she had not, the Inspector had set out the major points of difference between the two proposals so meticulously that had she considered whether they constituted a fundamental alteration she would have concluded that they did not.

The application for judicial review failed.

The High Court has quashed three decisions not to grant prior approval for office to residential conversion, because the site to which the applications related benefited from permitted development rights, when the reason for refusal on each decision notice said it did not.

In 2017, an Inspector had allowed two appeals against the London Borough of Hounslow’s (LBH) refusal to grant prior approval to convert offices in Brentford into 213 or 171 dwellings, depending on the scheme built out.

In December 2017, three further prior approval applications were submitted for alternative office to residential schemes at the same site.  In January 2018, an Article 4 Direction removing Class O (office to residential) permitted development rights was confirmed, and the site is within an area to which the Direction relates.

Consequently, LBH refused prior approval for all three December 2017 proposals because planning permission (on application) was required.  Berkshire Assets (West London) Ltd, the freeholder of the site, sought a judicial review of those decisions.

The wording of Schedule 1 of the Article 4 Direction, and particularly the text in the first set of brackets, was critical to the judgment.  Schedule 1 begins:

“Development consisting of a change of use of a building and any land within its curtilage (excluding any building or land in relation to which prior approval under paragraphs O.2 and W of Part 3 of Schedule 2 to the Order has been granted or under the terms of those paragraphs is treated as granted before the date this Direction is confirmed) from a use falling within Class B1(a) (offices) of the Schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 (as amended), to a use falling within Class C3 (dwellinghouses) […]”.

According to the judgment, the Schedule 1 wording mirrors that in London Borough of Sutton and of Merton Article 4 Directions, which were modified by the Secretary of State in July 2014 so that office premises (rather than development) that secured prior approval prior to those Article 4 Directions coming into force were excluded from the Direction (i.e. the text in brackets after ‘curtilage’ was inserted by the SoS).

Deputy High Court Judge Justine Thornton QC accepted Berkshire Assets’ arguments that the plain meaning of the Direction excludes sites with extant prior approvals for office to residential conversion.  “The Council’s more restrictive interpretation, which limits the effect of the exclusion to specific development with extant prior approval, would require the word ‘development’ to be substituted for ‘any building or land’ in the wording of the Direction.”

The Deputy Judge went on to consider extent to which the purpose and context of Direction influences its interpretation but concluded that the Cabinet Report confirming the Article 4 Direction did not address the scope of the exemption, and the Secretary of State’s wording relied upon, and devised for different LPAs, gives broader protection than the Council intended. 

The judgment did not consider whether the exclusion would apply to lapsed approvals.

Government consults on introducing mandatory biodiversity net gain for many developments

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published is consulting on whether to mandate that new developments must achieve a biodiversity net gain to be measured using the ‘Defra metric’.  This follows the 25 Year Environment Plan, published by Defra in January 2018, seeking to embed a ‘net environmental gain’ principle for development.

It is intended that where a development is unable to mitigate biodiversity loss on site or purchase the required biodiversity units locally, the developer would be required to pay a cash tariff on their shortfall against net gain obligations; the consultation provides an illustrative example of how this might be calculated.

The consultation proposes that mandatory biodiversity net gain would apply to development requiring planning permission, except most householder development, permitted development and ‘developments not resulting in measurable loss or degradation of habitat’.  It seeks views on whether small sites and brownfield sites should also be exempted.  Nationally significant infrastructure projects would not be affected by the procedures.

The net gain requirement would not be introduced until at least a year after the legislation that provided for it was introduced.

The consultation closes on 10 February 2018

Defra, Net gain consultation