Councillor, the law is the law and it’s not up to you to make the law.

As many of you may know, I have a legal background and I do love reading about interesting cases… especially where they set a precedent that helps to clarify things a bit.

It was with great excitement that I read about an appeal in North Yorkshire. The developer worked with the planners (as they should) and they agreed that plans for a 53 unit application were acceptable. The site is allocated in the Local Plan and the officers did their job very well and wrote it up for an approval. However, the planning committee then refused planning permission on three flimsy grounds (highways, landscaping and biodiversity impact). This was after a number of deferrals by the committee asking for more irrelevant information.

The Council officers then took legal advice and decided NOT to fight the appeal. And quite right too. They are professionals and they had done a very good job to ensure that the plans are legally compliant and duly wrote up a report that reflected their learned opinion. Decisions by planning committees like this places officers in an impossible position. If you have made a professional recommendation that is based on the law, you can’t then expect officers to stand up in front of an inspector and say “sorry guv, we got it wrong with our professional qualifications – the Councillors with no qualifications got it right”.

At the appeal, the inspector concluded in his costs decision that the council (i.e. planning committee) had not processed the application “in the most efficient manner” and was “not able to find reasonable grounds for having overturned the officer’s recommendation”. The committee, which had deferred taking the decision on the application a number of times, had argued that members were “taking their role seriously and ensuring that they dealt with the proposal thoroughly”. However, he concluded that “some of the deferrals… for more information were not necessary as they would not have formed a reason for refusal”.

The council’s justification for changing its mind on the appeal was that it took legal advice. The inspector dismissed this as “not a credible position as legal advice would have been available to it prior to the planning application being considered” by committee, and in any event these matters “did not change” between the refusal and the council’s decision to drop the appeal. He concluded the applicant had thus “incurred wasted and unnecessary expenditure in both preparing for, attending the Inquiry and presenting evidence”.

The amount payable under the costs award will be subject to an agreement between its officers and the developer. And this will be substantial. And quite rightly, it should be. 

So, my message to members of ANY planning committee is simple: “The law is the law and it’s not up to you to try and make the law. Your democratic duty is to uphold it! So do it!”

Until next week,

Henry