Developer Gleeson Strategic Land was notified by PINS in March that its application to build 180 homes on a greenfield site in Malmesbury, Wiltshire had been granted approval on appeal following Wiltshire Council's refusal of the plans in March last year. However, the letter had been issued in error by an Inspector who was unaware that another Inspector, who was on leave that day, had been notified that the SoS had decided to call in the application.
PINS sent a letter to the developer the next day saying that the decision had been withdrawn and that the SoS had decided to call in the application. It said that the first letter had been issued due to an administrative error. Gleeson subsequently launched a judicial review challenge against both the withdrawal of the letter and the SoS's decision to call in the application.
The judge dismissed all grounds of the claim, including Gleeson's submission that the decision to call in the application was ineffective because it had not been communicated to all parties, including the Planning Inspector who determined the application, before the Inspector issued his decision.
The judge said that the direction to recover the appeal was in force when the Inspector issued his letter and that the Inspector therefore "no longer had any function to perform and the issue of his decision letter was to no effect". He said that only those decisions which adversely affect an individual's rights need to be communicated to all parties and that the decision to recover the appeal did not affect Gleeson but simply substituted the SoS as the decision-maker.
The judge said that, even if the decision to call in the application had not been effective, a "modest power" existed to allow "simple and obvious administrative errors" to be corrected within a "relatively short timescale".
"It would be contrary to good administration to allow an administrative error of the kind which led to the Planning Inspector's decision being inadvertently issued to have a permanent and irrevocable effect from the moment it was issued, regardless of how quickly the SoS and the Planning Inspectorate sought to put it right," he said.
The judge also rejected that the SoS's withdrawal had breached Gleeson's rights under the European Convention on Human Rights because it had interfered with its legitimate expectation that planning permission had been granted.
He said that, because the developer was informed of the error within the day, any interference with its Convention right was minimal. "Moreover, the interference was justified as a fair balance between the claimant's interests and the general public interest, given the nature of the error in this case," he said.
