The Duty is to Reason Why: Providing Reasons for Granting Planning Permission

摘要

There has been a longstanding requirement to provide reasons for refusal and for conditions, and to some extent the remedy for failures to make these "...full and concise..." is an appeal being allowed, sometimes with costs awarded against the council. However, the requirement to provide summary reasons for approvals set out in art.22(1) is relatively new and Sullivan J.'s judgement in Wall is an early indication about the ways in which this requirement can be used to structure committee decision-making. The committee's attempt to reach consensus about the reasons provided for the grant of permission from those supporting the application, will be found in the record of its proceedings. It may, therefore, be the entirety of the committee proceedings that are dissected when such decisions are subject to challenge in the courts. One response would be for committee members to limit their contribution to the debate and, particularly, to attempt to limit contributions that depart substantially from the reasons that are being recommended by the officers that are likely to represent the main reference for the "summary reasons" that appear on the planning permission itself. The duty to provide reasons not only creates changes in respect of the council procedures, but the actual drafting of reasons for approval following a committee debate could be categorised as a discrete new skill, for which officers may require training if reasons are going to serve their primary purpose of satisfying interested parties that a decision has been properly reached. A rash of such challenges to LPA approvals may encourage a re-examination of the benefits of third party rights of appeal, where it would be the decision, rather than the reasons, that would be primarily subject to examination.