DATE: 30 Jul 2009
In this important judgment the Court of Appeal overturned a decision of Wyn Williams J and quashed a grant of planning permission for the redevelopment of a school on Metropolitan Open Land because the local planning authority had failed to consider properly whether an alternative scheme might cause less planning harm. There are many instances of the treatment of alternative sites/schemes by decision-makers being upheld by the courts, but very few reported examples of a failure to take alternatives into account leading to a decision being quashed. In his judgment (with which the Chancellor of the High Court and Moore-Bick LJ agreed) Sullivan LJ said that the woefully inadequate report to committee meant that Councillors were in no position to decide whether the possibility of the scheme being carried out in an alternative, less harmful way was material to their decision.
Richard Langham appeared for the successful appellant, Langley Park School for Girls.
