E. Clarke & Sons (Homes) Ltd v The Secretary of State for The Environment and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE WALLER,LORD JUSTICE FOX,LORD JUSTICE MAY |
| Judgment Date | 03 May 1983 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1983] EWCA Civ J0503-3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | 83/0685 |
| Date | 03 May 1983 |
[1983] EWCA Civ J0503-3
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
(MR JUSTICE WOOLF)
Royal Courts of Justice,
Lord Justice Waller
Lord Justice Fox
Lord Justice May
83/0685
1982 No. CO 831
Re: Town & Country Planning Act, 1971
and
MR M. HORTON (instructed by Messrs. Turner, Garrett & Co., Solicitors, Byfleet) appeared on behalf of the Appellants.
MR D. LATHAM (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared on behalf of the Respondents.
This is an appeal against a decision of Mr Justice Woolf, hearing an appeal from a decision of the Secretary of State for the Environment in a planning matter, which concerned proposed property at Woking. The proposal was to erect a new four-storey building with three ground-floor shops and three office floors above on land at 83–87 Goldsworth Road, Woking. The local Planning Authority refused that application on a number of grounds—all of which I do not need to set out here, because some of them were rejected by the Inspector when an appeal was launched to the Minister.
The three grounds which the Inspector did not accept related (l) to access to the premises (2) to the car parking facilities, and (3) to the fact that the application was premature because, on one argument, it would take some considerable time before these particular difficulties could be dealt with. As I have said, those grounds were rejected by the Inspector, but there remained one ground upon which he upheld the Planning Authority, and that was a ground which turned upon office policy.
The requirements in Woking depended, among other things, upon the policy of the County Council as a whole. Although we have not gone far back into the history of this matter, in 1976 there was a policy statement by the Surrey County Council setting out their policy for the control of office development.
This particular appeal arose later when a different policy control was in existence—namely the Surrey Structure Plan, which was dated April, 1980. That Structure Plan, which had been amended in a number of particulars by the Minister, included a number of policy statements, dealing with particular matters in two kinds of print—the main policy being set out in block letters, but the explanations being contained (sometimes before and sometimes afterwards) in non-block print.
The policy with which this case is concerned is Policy 24, which reads as follows: "OFFICE DEVELOPMENT WILL NORMALLY BE PERMITTED ONLY IN URBAN AREAS WHERE IT CAN BE SHOWN THAT IT IS ESSENTIAL: (i) TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY, OR (ii) AS AN ANCILLARY TO LOCAL INDUSTRY…" and I need not refer to (iii).
There is an explanation of that policy in ordinary print, which follows: "Local Planning Authorities will have to be satisfied that such development is required to meet local needs and that the predominant function of the proposed occupant would be to provide an essential service or facility for the residents or activities in the locality. Examples of offices which Local Planning Authorities might consider justifiable to meet local community needs could include: Local Job Centres, Citizens' Advice Bureaux, Accommodation Agencies; Solicitors, Accountants…" and then follow similar professional activities.
Then the next paragraph reads: "It is intended to limit the growth of individual local office concerns and thereby retain a strong element of control over the total number of office jobs which could result from possible development permitted by this policy.
The learned Judge dealt in some detail with certain paragraphs of the Inspector's Report, to which I shall refer in due course.
The Inspector's recommendations were accepted by the Minister and, as I have already indicated, the learned Judge dismissed an appeal against those findings, under the provisions of Section 245 of the Town & Country Planning Act, 1971.
There were a number of arguments addressed to the learned Judge with a view to submitting that the appeal against the Minister's decision should be allowed—but we do not have to deal with all of those arguments.
Before us, Mr Horton, on behalf of the appellants, has made two main submissions, the second of which, to some extent, is related to the first. His first main submission was "that the learned Judge erred in law in holding that the decision of the first Respondent" (that is the Minister) "to refuse permission rather than to grant it subject to an occupancy condition was not perverse".
Mr Horton has submitted that it was perverse and indeed, as part of that submission, has referred to a number of earlier decisions in which decisions were made by the Minister which he submits were inherently different from the decisions which he made in this case.
As I see it, those submissions completely fail for a number of reasons. First of all, each of those cases—and there were five to which he referred—contained facts which were different from the present case. Mr Horton was concerned to submit to this Court that what the Minister should have done was to grant planning permission, subject to a condition that the premises should not be used other than as office accommodation satisfying a need of the local community.
But he has relied on these earlier cases as showing that that was a course which the Minister sometimes adopted. However, there are a number of reasons why, in my opinion, they give no assistance whatever in this present case. First of all, the facts in each of those cases are quite different from what they were in the present case. In two or three of them, the Planning Authority had granted planning permission subject to a condition, and the Minister discharged that condition. As I see it, that does not give any support to the view...
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