R Driver v Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Supperstone |
| Judgment Date | 27 March 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] EWHC 1132 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 27 March 2018 |
| Docket Number | CO/5627/2017 |
[2018] EWHC 1132 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
PLANNING COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
THE HONOURABLE Mr Justice Supperstone
CO/5627/2017
APPEARANCES
Mr H Waller (instructed by Richard Buxton Environmental and Public Law) appeared on behalf of the Claimant.
Miss M Thomas (instructed by Government Legal Department) appeared on behalf of the Defendant.
The claimant renews her application for permission to challenge the decision of the defendant made on 25 October 2017 to adopt the Maidstone Borough Local Plan pursuant to s.113 of the Planning Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, following refusal on the papers by Dove J.
There are two grounds of challenge. First, there was an error of law in the identification of what were to be strategic policies in the Local Plan; second, as to the legality of the sustainability appraisal.
On ground 1 the claimant contends that the defendant unlawfully adopted a blanket approach of classifying all site allocations in Policy H1 as strategic policies. Mr Waller, for the claimant, submits that this is unlawful because the defendant should have considered site-specific considerations, such as scale, when determining which site allocations to classify as strategic policies. Dove J rejected this ground of challenge, observing that Policy H1 is a policy which establishes the overall housing allocation made by the Local Plan in accordance with the Settlement Hierarchy and the Spatial Strategy established by Policy SS1. All of the allocations identified by Policy H1 are part of the Strategic Policy, as taken in aggregate and of whatever size they enable the overall strategy of the plan to be achieved. The judge considered that in the light of this, the judgment the inspector reached that it was correct to endorse the identification Policy H1 (as a whole and incorporating its component parts) as a strategic policy was a question of planning judgment, which he was entitled to reach.
Mr Waller submits that this reasoning is flawed for three reasons. First, the judge mistakes the test for assessing whether a policy is strategic. The classification for site allocation as strategic must, he submits, be based upon an assessment of the importance of that site allocation towards achieving the...
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