In enforcing the full rigour of green belt protection policies following an important test case, the Court of Appeal has scotched controversial plans for the expansion of a Surrey aerodrome and the replacement of grass landing strips with a hard runway.
Local authorities had refused planning consent for the proposals and their decisions were upheld by a Government planning inspector. However, the developers argued that the latter’s approach to protecting the metropolitan green belt was too tough and set an almost impossibly high benchmark.
Those arguments succeeded before the High Court and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was directed to reconsider. However, the company’s hopes were finally dashed when the Court ruled that the inspector’s interpretation of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) could not be faulted.
There was no challenge the inspector’s ruling that the proposals would amount to ‘inappropriate development’ of the green belt. However, the developers pointed to the substantial economic and employment benefits of the project and argued that she should have found that there were ‘very special circumstances’ which justified a grant of planning permission.
The inspector found that such factors did not outweigh the loss of openness and encroachment into the countryside that the scheme would entail. Controversially, she also took into account other, ‘non-green belt’, factors – including noise disturbance, transport difficulties and the ‘quality of life’ of residents – when rejecting the plans.
The company argued that such matters were simply irrelevant to the issue of harm to the green belt which the inspector had to decide. If her approach was correct, it was submitted that it would in future be next to impossible to establish that very special circumstances existed.
However, in allowing an appeal brought by the local authorities and the Secretary of State, the Court found that the company’s arguments were based on a fallacious reading of the NPPF. The inspector was entitled to take the full range of potentially harmful effects into account when deciding that the benefits of the proposals were outweighed by the disadvantages.