planning

Aarhus: UK seems to be in trouble again, this time with the CJEU

13 September 2013 by David Hart KC

Commission v. UK, Opinion of Advocate-General Kokott, 12 September 2013 read opinion here 

“It is well known that in United Kingdom court proceedings are not cheap” – a masterly understatement opening this opinion from our pictured AG to the CJEU about whether the UK system on legal costs complies with the obligation now in two EU Directives about environmental assessment and pollution control. The AG thinks that our way of doing costs is not up to scratch – with the origin of this obligation to be found in  the UN-ECE Aarhus Convention to which the EU has subscribed (albeit abstemiously when the EU comes to its own affairs – funny that). 

Bit of context – the EU has been warning the UK about costs for some years, with formal warnings going back to 2007 – and the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee has been doing likewise from Geneva. But the EU courts are more scary – all the ACCC can do is wrap the odd knuckle. And on this topic, we have one individual case which has been to the CJEU (Edwards, where the UK does not look in good shape – see my post), and now this case saying that the UK has a systemic problem with excessive costs.

But one thing we must remember. The law according to the AG looks at the law before the UK had a go at sorting the problem out – see my post, as above. on the new UK regime. There is some important stuff about how the old system did not comply, which will have implications for the new rules.

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Aarhus watch: a UK breach, and a fudge

7 September 2013 by David Hart KC

ACCC/C/2012/68 read draft findings here and ACCC/C/2010/45 read findings here

Two interesting decisions from the Geneva-based Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (ACCC) about whether the UK planning system complies with the UN-ECE Aarhus Convention.

The first was given excellent recent coverage in the Independent – a Scottish wind farm case where UK plans for renewable energy had not received the public consultation which Article 7 of the Convention required. The second, which promised much (see my previous post), ducked the issues in a rather unsatisfactory way.

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A1P1 and property rights in the Supreme Court again

25 June 2013 by David Hart KC

Cusack v. London Borough of Harrow  [2013] UKSC, 19 June 2013 read judgment 

This is the tale of how a solicitor from Harrow ended up litigating about his off-street parking in the Supreme Court – and reached for Article 1 of Protocol 1 (A1P1) of ECHR, by way of a second string to his bow. Not his choice, as he had won in the Court of Appeal on other grounds. But his failure on the point reminds us that in the majority of cases A1P1 is a difficult argument to bring home.

Mr Cusack had been parking his car in front of his premises since the late 1960s. He got temporary planning permission for his offices in 1973, but hung on when this expired and got established planning rights in 1976.

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Planning policy versus the UN rights of the child

11 April 2013 by David Hart KC

Stevens v. Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, Hickinbottom J, 10 April 2013 read judgment

As the judge explicitly recognised, this case raised the clash of two principles – how to resolve the policy-driven field of planning with the rights of family under Article 8 ECHR and of the child under Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

The battlefield was the well-trodden one of a Gypsy family living in caravans within the Green Belt, but without existing planning permission for those caravans. Ms Stevens sought to regularise this by applying for retrospective permission. The Council turned her down, and her appeal to a planning inspector was dismissed. She then made a statutory challenge to that decision under section 288 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990, seeking to quash it and have it re-determined.

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New Coalition abolishes Infrastructure Planning Commission after less than a year of operation

28 May 2010 by Elspeth Wrigley

The Infrastructure Planning Commission (“IPC”) is to be one of the first fatalities of the new coalition government. What impact will another change to the controversial system have on the fairness of planning decisions?

In a letter on 24 May 2010, the head of the IPC, Sir Michael Pitt, has confirmed the government is planning to scrap the organisation as a part of a wider overhaul planning powers in the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The IPC was set up as part of a number of planning reforms under the Planning Act 2008. The goal of the IPC is described on the website as “making the application process for nationally significant infrastructure projects faster, fairer and easier for people to get involved in”. Whether the IPC was achieving this goal is hard to say, as the body only began operation on 1 October 2009, and only began to receive applications on 1 March 2010.

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