Turner v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government & Anor

This is an appeal from the judgment of Lang J in which she dismissed an application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash a decision of a Planning Inspector to refuse to grant planning permission for development of a plot of land on Barrack Road, West Parley, Ferndown, Dorset (“the site”). The site is located in the South East Dorset Green Belt. The appellant developer submits that the Inspector erred in his interpretation and application of para. 89 of the National Planning Policy Framework (“the NPPF”) concerning the circumstances in which development on the Green Belt may not be regarded as inappropriate and in his approach to the concept of the “openness” of the Green Belt.

Barrack Road is characterised by a mix of residential and commercial properties spasmodically placed along the road. The eastern side of the road where the site is located does not have a continuously built up frontage. The site is in open countryside, and not in an urban area or settlement.

There is a static single unit mobile home stationed on the site which is used for residential purposes. Adjacent to this is a substantial area of a commercial storage yard which is used for the storage of vehicles; the preparation, repair, valeting and sale of commercial vehicles and cars; the ancillary breaking and dismantling of up to eight vehicles per month; and the ancillary sale and storage of vehicle parts from a workshop on the site. A certificate of lawful existing use was granted in 2003 for the mobile home and lawful use has been established in respect of the storage yard in a planning appeal decision. We were told that the storage yard has capacity to park some 41 lorries as an established lawful use of the site.

The appellant’s application for planning permission is for a proposal to replace the mobile home and storage yard with a three bedroom residential bungalow and associated residential curtilage. Another area of land adjacent to the site would be retained to continue the existing commercial enterprise. In his application, the appellant compared the proposed redevelopment with the existing lawful use of the land for the mobile home and 11 parked lorries in order to suggest that the volume of the proposed bungalow would be less than the volume of the mobile home and that many lorries and that, accordingly, the proposed redevelopment “would not have a greater impact on the openness of the Green Belt” than the existing lawful use of the site, with the result that it should not be regarded as inappropriate development in the Green Belt (para. 89 of the NPPF).

The local planning authority refused the application. The Inspector, Mr Philip Willmer, dismissed the appellant’s appeal. He found that the proposed redevelopment was inappropriate development in the Green Belt, notwithstanding that it would replace the existing lawful use of the site, and that there were no “very special circumstances” (para. 87 of the NPPF) which would justify the grant of permission for the development. The judge dismissed the application to quash his decision.

This appeal turns on the application of the NPPF, and in particular para. 89. Section 9 of the NPPF is headed "Protecting Green Belt land". It starts at paras. 79-81 with a statement of some broad principles:

The provisions relating to inappropriate development are at paras. 87-90:

An important part of the appellant’s case before the Inspector was his contention that his application fell within the sixth bullet point in para. 89 of the NPPF, so that the proposed development by building the bungalow would not count as inappropriate development in the Green Belt. The Inspector dismissed this contention in paras. 8 to 15 of his decision. At para. 8 he set out the sixth bullet point and recorded the appellant’s argument and at para. 9 he explained that the development would not constitute limited infilling. The issue therefore turned on the question of impact on the openness of the Green Belt. The Inspector dealt with this as follows:

It is this part of the Inspector’s reasoning which is under challenge. (I should mention that although in paras. 11 and 12 of the decision the Inspector referred to “operational development” rather than simply “development”, the judge correctly found that this was an immaterial slip and there is no appeal in that regard). Having found that the redevelopment was inappropriate development in the Green Belt, it is unsurprising that the Inspector found that there were not adequate grounds to justify the grant of planning permission.

On the appellant’s section 288 application the appellant had three grounds of challenge to the Inspector’s decision, of which two are relevant on this appeal: (i) the Inspector failed to treat the existing development on the site as a relevant material factor to be taken into account in considering whether the sixth bullet point of para. 89 was applicable, and (ii) the Inspector wrongly conflated the concept of openness in relation to the Green Belt with the concept of visual impact. The judge rejected all the grounds of challenge and the appellant now appeals to this Court, relying again on these two grounds.

In his oral submissions, Mr Rudd developed the first ground somewhat. His submission was that the Inspector was wrong to say that no valid comparison could be made between the volume of moveable chattels (mobile home and lorries) on the site and a permanent structure in the form of the proposed bungalow; on the proper construction of the concept of “openness of the Green Belt” as used in the sixth bullet point in para. 89 of the NPPF the sole criterion of openness for the purpose of the comparison required by that bullet point was the volume of structures comprising the existing lawful use of a site compared with that of the structure proposed by way of redevelopment of that site (“the volumetric approach”); a comparison between the volume of existing development on the site in this case in the form of the mobile home and 11 lorries as against the volume of the proposed bungalow showed that there would be a lesser impact on the openness of the Green Belt if the existing development were replaced by the bungalow and the Inspector should so have concluded; and the Inspector erred by having regard to a wider range of considerations apart from the volume of development on the site (including the factor of visual impact) in para. 14 of the decision on the way to reaching his conclusion at para. 15. This last point overlaps with the second ground of challenge and it is appropriate to address both grounds together, as the judge did.

I do not accept these submissions by Mr Rudd. First, in so far as it is suggested that the Inspector did not address himself to the comparative exercise called for under the sixth bullet point in para. 89, the suggestion is incorrect. The Inspector set out that bullet point and then proceeded to make an evaluative comparative assessment of the existing lawful use and the proposed redevelopment in paras. 10 to 15 of the decision.

The principal matter in issue is whether the Inspector adopted an improper approach to the question of openness of the Green Belt when he made that comparison. The question of the true interpretation of the NPPF is a matter for the court. In my judgment, the approach the Inspector adopted was correct and the judge was right so to hold.

The concept of “openness of the Green Belt” is not narrowly limited to the volumetric approach suggested by Mr Rudd. The word “openness” is open-textured and a number of factors are capable of being relevant when it comes to applying it to the particular facts of a specific case. Prominent among these will be factors relevant to how built up the Green Belt is now and how built up it would be if redevelopment occurs (in the context of which, volumetric matters may be a material concern, but are by no means the only one) and factors relevant to the visual impact on the aspect of openness which the Green Belt presents.

The question of visual impact is implicitly part of the concept of “openness of the Green Belt” as a matter of the natural meaning of the language used in para. 89 of the NPPF. I consider that this interpretation is also reinforced by the general guidance in paras. 79-81 of the NPPF, which introduce section 9 on the protection of Green Belt Land. There is an important visual dimension to checking “the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas” and the merging of neighbouring towns, as indeed the name “Green Belt” itself implies. Greenness is a visual quality: part of the idea of the Green Belt is that the eye and the spirit should be relieved from the prospect of unrelenting urban sprawl. Openness of aspect is a characteristic quality of the countryside, and “safeguarding the countryside from encroachment” includes preservation of that quality of openness. The preservation of “the setting … of historic towns” obviously refers in a material way to their visual setting, for instance when seen from a distance across open fields. Again, the reference in para. 81 to planning positively “to retain and enhance landscapes, visual amenity and biodiversity” in the Green Belt makes it clear that the visual dimension of the Green Belt is an important part of the point of designating land as Green Belt.

The visual dimension of the openness of the Green Belt does not exhaust all relevant planning factors relating to visual impact when a proposal for development in the Green Belt comes up for consideration. For example, there may be harm to visual amenity for neighbouring properties arising from the proposed development which needs to be taken into account as well. But it does not follow from the fact that there may be other harms with a visual dimension apart from harm to the openness of the Green Belt that the concept of openness of the Green Belt has no visual dimension itself.

Mr Rudd relied upon a section of the judgment of Green J sitting at first instance in R (Timmins) v Gedling Borough Council [2014] EWHC 654 (Admin) at [67]-[78], in which the learned judge addressed the question of the relationship between openness of the Green Belt and visual impact. Green J referred to the judgment of Sullivan J in R (Heath and Hampstead Society) v Camden LBC [2007] EWHC 977 (Admin); [2007] 2 P&CR 19, which related to previous policy in relation to the Green Belt as set out in Planning Policy Guidance 2 (“PPG 2”), and drew from it the propositions that “there is a clear conceptual distinction between openness and visual impact” and “it is therefore wrong in principle to arrive at a specific conclusion as to openness by reference to visual impact”: para. [78] (Green J’s emphasis). The case went on appeal, but this part of Green J’s judgment was not in issue on the appeal: [2015] EWCA Civ 10; [2016] 1 All ER 895.

In my view, Green J went too far and erred in stating the propositions set out above. This section of his judgment should not be followed. There are three problems with it. First, with respect to Green J, I do not think that he focused sufficiently on the language of section 9 of the NPPF, read as part of the coherent and self-contained statement of national planning policy which the NPPF is intended to be. The learned judge does not consider the points made above. Secondly, through his reliance on the Heath and Hampstead Society case Green J has given excessive weight to the statement of planning policy in PPG 2 for the purposes of interpretation of the NPPF. He has not made proper allowance for the fact that PPG 2 is expressed in materially different terms from section 9 of the NPPF. Thirdly, I consider that the conclusion he has drawn is not in fact supported by the judgment of Sullivan J in the Heath and Hampstead Society case.

The general objective of PPG 2 was to make provision for the protection of Green Belts. Paragraph 3.2 stated that inappropriate development was, by definition, harmful to the Green Belt. Paragraph 3.6 stated:

It was the application of this provision which was in issue in the Heath and Hampstead Society case. It can be seen that this provision broadly corresponds with the fourth bullet point in para. 89 of the NPPF and that it has a specific focus on the relative size of an existing building and of the proposed addition or replacement.

The NPPF was introduced in 2012 as a new, self-contained statement of national planning policy to replace the various policy guidance documents that had proliferated previously. The NPPF did not simply repeat what was in those documents. It set out national planning policy afresh in terms which are at various points materially different from what went before. This court gave guidance regarding the proper approach to the interpretation of the NPPF in the Timmins case at para. [24]. The NPPF should be interpreted objectively in accordance with the language used, read in its proper context. But the previous guidance – specifically in Timmins, as in this case and in Redhill Aerodrome Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2014] EWCA Civ 1386; [2015] 1 P & CR 36 to which the court in Timmins referred, the guidance on Green Belt policy in PPG 2 – remains relevant. In particular, since in promulgating the NPPF the Government made it clear that it strongly supported the Green Belt and did not intend to change the central policy that inappropriate development in the Green Belt should not be allowed, section 9 of the NPPF should not be read in such a way as to weaken protection for the Green Belt: see the Redhill Aerodrome case at [16] per Sullivan LJ, quoted in Timmins at [24].

The Heath and Hampstead Society case concerned a proposal to demolish an existing residential building on Metropolitan Open Land (which was subject to a policy giving it the same level of protection as the Green Belt) and replace it with a new dwelling. Sullivan J rejected the submission that the test in para. 3.6 was solely concerned with a mathematical comparison of relevant dimensions: [19]. However, he accepted the alternative submission that the exercise under para. 3.6 was primarily an objective one by reference to size, where which particular physical dimension was most relevant would depend on the circumstances of a particular case, albeit with floor space usually being an important criterion: [20]. It was not appropriate to substitute a test such as “providing the new dwelling is not more visually intrusive than the dwelling it replaces” for the test actually stated in para. 3.6, namely whether the new dwelling was materially larger or not: [20]. As Sullivan J said, “Paragraph 3.6 is concerned with the size of the replacement dwelling, not with its visual impact”: [21]. In that regard, also at para. [21], he relied in addition on para. 3.15 of PPG 2 which made specific provision in relation to visual amenities in the Green Belt. Neither para. 3.6 of PPG 2 (with its specific focus on comparative size of the existing and replacement buildings) nor para. 3.15 of PPG 2 refer to the concept of the “openness of the Green Belt”. They do not correspond with the text of the sixth bullet point in para. 89 of the NPPF, and section 9 of the NPPF contains no provision equivalent to para. 3.15 of PPG 2. It is therefore not appropriate to treat this part of the judgment in Heath and Hampstead Society as providing authoritative guidance on the interpretation of the sixth bullet point in para. 89 of the NPPF. At paras. [22] and [36]-[38] Sullivan J emphasised that the relevant issue in the case specifically concerned the application of para. 3.6 of PPG 2 and whether the proposed replacement house was materially larger than the existing house.

At para. [22] Sullivan J said, “The loss of openness (i.e. unbuilt on land) within the Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land is of itself harmful to the underlying policy objective”. Since the concept of the openness of the Green Belt has a spatial or physical aspect as well as a visual aspect, that statement is true in the context of the NPPF as well, provided it is not taken to mean that openness is only concerned with the spatial issue. Such an interpretation accords with the guidance on interpretation of the NPPF given by this court in the Timmins and Redhill Aerodrome cases, to the effect that the NPPF is to be interpreted as providing no less protection for the Green Belt than PPG 2. The case before Sullivan J was concerned with a proposed new, larger building which represented a spatial intrusion upon the openness of the Green Belt but which did not intrude visually on that openness, so he was not concerned to explain what might be the position under PPG 2 generally if there had been visual intrusion instead or as well.

Sullivan J gives a general reason for the importance of spatial intrusion at para. [37] of his judgment:

This remains relevant guidance in relation to the concept of openness of the Green Belt in the NPPF. The same strict approach to protection of the Green Belt appears from para. 87 of the NPPF. The openness of the Green Belt has a spatial aspect as well as a visual aspect, and the absence of visual intrusion does not in itself mean that there is no impact on the openness of the Green Belt as a result of the location of a new or materially larger building there. But, as observed above, it does not follow that openness of the Green Belt has no visual dimension.

What is also significant in this paragraph of Sullivan J’s judgment for present purposes is the last sentence, from which it appears that Sullivan J considered that a series of modest visual intrusions from new developments would be a way in which the essential quality of the openness of the Green Belt could be damaged, even if it could not be said of each such intrusion that it represented demonstrable harm to the openness of the Green Belt in itself. At any rate, Sullivan J does not say that the openness of the Green Belt has no visual dimension. Hence I think that Green J erred in Timmins in taking the Heath and Hampstead Society case to provide authority for the two propositions he sets out at para. [78] of his judgment, to which I have referred above.

Turning back to the Inspector’s decision in the present case, there is no error of approach by the Inspector in his assessment of the issue of impact on the openness of the Green Belt. In paras. 11 to 13 the Inspector made a legitimate comparison of the existing position regarding use of the site with the proposed redevelopment. This was a matter of evaluative assessment for the Inspector in the context of making a planning judgment about relative impact on the openness of the Green Belt. His assessment cannot be said to be irrational. It was rational and legitimate for him to assess on the facts of this case that there is a difference between a permanent physical structure in the form of the proposed bungalow and a shifting body of lorries, which would come and go; and even following the narrow volumetric approach urged by the appellant the Inspector was entitled to make the assessment that the two types of use and their impact on the Green Belt could not in the context of this site be “directly compared as proposed by the appellant” (para. 13). The Inspector was also entitled to take into account the difference in the visual intrusion on the openness of the Green Belt as he did in para. 14.

For the reasons given above, I would dismiss this appeal.

I agree.

I also agree.