News and Resources

Choiceplace Properties Limited v Secretary of State (Dove J, 27 April 2021) amounts to a short and sharp lesson for applicants and their advisers: make sure your application plans are accurate, not just in relation to your development proposals but as to the relationship of the proposals to the existing streetscape or landscape, particularly if …

There will be no blog post this weekend, in memory of Stephen Ashworth. I commend his Dentons partner Roy Pinnock’s LinkedIn post and the many wonderful comments it elicited. Stephen – if only we could all cut through the nonsense like you could. You were the one I looked up to, always did. My condolences …

Great Bob Dylan album, almost. This post collects together in one place some of the recent planning, environmental and compulsory purchase litigation in relation to the High Speed Two rail project. R (Keir) v Natural England (16 April 2021, Lang J; further hearing before Holgate J, 23 April 2021, judgment reserved) This is the interim …

The community infrastructure levy system, in its application to lay individuals in particular, is monstrous, absurdly over-engineered, often badly administered and unfairly opaque. Could anyone disagree after reading Lang J’s judgment handed down yesterday in R (Trent) v Hertsmere Borough Council (16 April 2021)? (Or for another example see my 19 January 2019 blog post …

When cat herders describe their job to a friend, they probably say “It’s like editing a legal textbook written by 20 barristers from the same set of chambers, to an over-arching style guide, and a deadline”. As editor of the new second edition of “Cornerstone on the Planning Court” (Bloomsbury Professional), Michael Bedford QC would …

I have taken care over the heading of this piece about the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development etc.) (England) (Amendment) Order 2021, laid before Parliament on 31 March 2021, which introduces a new class MA into the GPDO, granting deemed planning permission for change of use from commercial and business use (class E) …

I pointed out in my 23 January 2021 blog post Temporary Covid Measures – Planning, Traffic, Local Government: There May Be Trouble Ahead that after 6 May 2021 local authorities may not be able to hold virtual meetings given the expiry on that date of the temporary freedom provided by Regulation 5 of the Local …

“A church house, gin house, a school house, outhouse” To what extent were Ike & Tina Turner also referring to the curtilage of any of those buildings? “There are some words or expressions which are like an elephant; its essence is difficult to put into words, but you know it when you see it. “Curtilage” …

Sometimes I think, why buy a legal text book when you can read it in a court judgment? Lindblom LJ has provided some useful practical guidance, in City & Country Bramshill Limited v Secretary of State (Court of Appeal, 9 March 2021), on how to go about the assessment, required by the NPPF, as to …

Surely planning becomes a democratic irrelevance when the plan making process is slower than the electoral cycle? That’s pretty much the position in London. After all, Sadiq Khan wouldn’t have managed it if he hadn’t been gifted a further year in post by virtue of the postponement of the May 2020 elections. Election: 7 May …