#Powys County Council permission for intensive chicken farm quashed following crowdfunded legal challenge: https://t.co/7lKYmTJ4bs pic.twitter.com/BW4hsk4Vcr
— Planning Magazine (@PlanningMag) March 12, 2021
The case was brought by campaign group Sustainable Food Knighton (SFK), which argued that the council had not taken all environmental impacts arising from the development into account when granting permission, in particular those stemming from the need to spread manure on fields.
The consent order said the council "accepts that there was no evidential basis for the officer's conclusion that the impacts on amenity from the proposed development would be acceptable because the fields were unlikely to be spread with manure from the proposed development more than twice per annum".
According to Local Government Association guidance, updated in 2019, planning committee reports are a "fertile ground for judicial review challenges". The LGA adds that the chance of such challenges is:
particularly so where there is a risk that the officer may have inadvertently misled the committee, therefore tainting the resulting decision
In 2018, a judge quashed planning approval for a 62-home development for that very reason:
concluding that an officers' report considered by the council's planning committee was 'materially misleading' regarding the scheme's impact on sunlight and daylight.
The judgement explained that members of the Development Committee:
may well have reached a different decision on the merits had the Officer's Reports not been misleading
Devon County Council are obviously aware of the risks. Here are two communications released through a Freedom of Information request in connection with the Straitgate application. From November 2017:
How much are you going to be able to give me in the final highways response regarding how we have taken on board these many representations from external objectors? I'm only asking as some of the issues may have to be "seen" to have been discounted if we are to avoid JR on this one...
"Seen"?
In another communication about the cattle crossing issue in February 2018:
... so the question is – what do we do to move it forward in a way that doesn’t lead us to a JR if its approved or costs if its refused?
