Clark refuses permission for 184 homes in Cheshire countryside

Clark decided several proposed conditions could not be attached to a planning permission, so he could not take into account the benefits they were designed to secure. As a result, he gave less weight to the social and economic benefits of the proposal than a planning inspector who had recommended the scheme for approval.

A letter issued on Clark's behalf (106-page / 992 KB PDF) said the then communities secretary agreed with planning inspector Mark Dakeyne that the proposal would be contrary to the local development plan.

The letter said the development site was outside the settlement boundary in a saved policy from the 2001 Vale Royal Borough Local Plan and the scheme would conflict with parts of the recently adopted strategic plan for the area requiring sustainable development and restricting building in the countryside.

Clark also identified conflict with the adopted Winsford Neighbourhood Plan, which allocated enough sites to meet local housing needs and did not did not recommend the site of the scheme for development.

In deciding to recommend approval for the scheme, Dakeyne had taken into consideration the economic and social benefits that would be secured by a series of draft planning conditions. These included four conditions designed to ensure that small or medium-sized local building companies were appointed to deliver 92 of the proposed homes; that some of the development was reserved for self-build homes; that local training and employment opportunities were offered; and that materials were locally procured.

Clark decided that none of these four conditions met the requirements of national planning policy.  He said none of them were necessary to make the application acceptable in planning terms, three of them would be difficult to enforce, two were not sufficiently precise and two were not strictly relevant to planning policy. Clark found that these conditions could not be attached to any planning permission and, therefore, gave the four conditions and the benefits they were proposed to secure, no weight in his decision.

Overall, Clark considered that the benefits of the scheme, including "substantial" social benefits and "moderate" economic benefits, did not outweigh "the clear conflict with the up to date development plan" and the moderate harm that would be caused by the loss of open fields. Disagreeing with Dakeyne's recommendation, he refused permission for the scheme.

Planning expert Matthew Fox of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "This case is a reminder that conditions cannot always form a panacea to overcome concerns that your scheme may have in complying with local policy. The conditions here helped to 'take the weight up a notch' of the economic benefits of the proposal, enough to outweigh the harms and non-policy compliance of the scheme, but without them, these harms clearly outweighed the remaining benefits."

"This shows two things," said Fox. "Firstly, that getting legal advice on the wording of conditions is vital – it is entirely possible that these conditions could have been worded in such as a way as to comply with the policy tests. Secondly, as we would always advise, putting the work in earlier to get your site allocated, or at least on the radar of the neighbourhood and local plan process, is a crucial step in being able to gain permission for your site."