Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government v South Gloucestershire CC

摘要

For the reasons I have given I would allow the appeal, and order that the inspector's decision be restored. Comment. In the face of the acknowledged legal error on the part of the inspector, the Court of Appeal was confronted with a simple issue: Should it set aside the decision of the judge at first instance to exercise his discretion and quash the planning permission that the inspector had granted? To answer this simple but critical issue it was necessary for the Court of Appeal to go back to basics by considering the approach it had taken previously in Simplex GE (Holdings) where it was held that a decision should not be quashed if, without the legal error, the substantive decision would still have been the same. Singh J had found reasons for not following the Simplex approach. In this appeal the burden of demonstrating that this was wrong was on the Secretary of State who appeared in an effort to defend his inspector's decision. At Lindblom LJ outlined the "very special circumstances" that had been used to justify planning permission being granted for inappropriate development in the Green Belt and, in particular, the inspector's conclusions about the appellant AZ's mental health and his and his family's personal circumstances. In the final analysis the Court of Appeal took the view that, in the extremely unusual circumstances of this case, the judge had erred in the exercise of his discretion. Lindblom LJ's explanation was lengthy and respectful to the Singh J's thinking (with his "characteristically lucid judgment") and to the relevant jurisprudence (see at). Nonetheless, the Court concluded that Singh J had erred. The other interesting feature of this decision is the passage at the end regarding the appropriate remedy and leaves open the question for further debate as to whether the court can grant a declaration in s.288 proceedings. However, before discussing this aspect the Court of Appeal tackled the issue relevant to this appeal by exercising its own discretion under s.288(5)(b) and refrained from quashing the inspector's decision thereby reviving the grant of planning permission. The alternative to this would have been to remit the matter back to Singh J. Clearly in the light of this judgment it would have been nigh on impossible for Singh J to have taken a different course of action from the Court of Appeal but this process would have taken time and I am sure added to the anxiety that the appellant AZ must have felt during this period of uncertainty. Ultimately whilst this is a highly technical decision it does demonstrate that a compassionate human dimension is not entirely absent from planning law when exceptional circumstances dictate.