Energy in UK Law

Section 70(3) of the Planning Act provides that section 70(1), which confers the power to grant planning permission, has effect subject to, inter alia, sections 66 and 72 of the Listed Buildings Act. Section 70(2) requires the decision-maker to have regard to "material considerations" when granting planning permission, but Parliament has made the power to grant permission having regard to material considerations expressly subject to the section 66(1) duty.

For these reasons, I agree with Lang J's conclusion that Parliament's intention in enacting section 66(1) was that decision-makers should give "considerable importance and weight" to the desirability of preserving the setting of listed buildings when carrying out the balancing exercise. I also agree with her conclusion that the Inspector did not give considerable importance and weight to this factor when carrying out the balancing exercise in this decision.

The first is merely the trite principle that the addressee of the specification is the person skilled in the art, who approaches the document with the common general knowledge. Second, there may be obscurities and difficulties in a claim that cannot be resolved by an appeal to context. Finally, and most importantly, over-meticulousness is not to be equated to carefulness. Care in working out what the patentee was aiming at when he chose the words he used is absolutely necessary.

It means that a plaintiff prima facie establishes negligence where: (1) it is not possible for him to prove precisely what was the relevant act or omission which set in train the events leading to the accident; but (ii) on the evidence as it stands at the relevant time it is more likely than not that the effective cause of the accident was some acts or omission of the defendant or of someone for whom the defendant is responsible, which act or omission constitutes a failure to take proper care for the plaintiff a safety.

The onus of proving that the result is inevitable is on those who wish to escape liability for nuisance, but the criterion of inevitability is not what is theoretically possible but what is possible according to the state of scientific knowledge at the time, having also in view a certain commonsense appreciation, which cannot be rigidly defined, of practical feasibility in view of situation and of expense.

I would respectfully agree that, where the CPR has expressly provided for a three month time limit, the courts cannot adopt a policy that in judicial review challenges to the grant of a planning permission a time limit of six weeks will in practice apply. However, that does not seem to me to rob the point made by Simon Brown Jothers of all of its force.

When an expert planning inspector refers to a paragraph within that grouping of provisions (as the Inspector referred to paragraph 134 of the NPPF in the Decision Letter in this case) then — absent some positive contrary indication in other parts of the text of his reasons —the appropriate inference is that he has taken properly into account all those provisions, not that he has forgotten about all the other paragraphs apart from the specific one he has mentioned.