Council issuing compulsory purchase order – Land to provide access road – Inspector recommending non-confirmation of order – Secretary of State not accepting recommendation and confirming order – Application for decision to be quashed – Whether Secretary of State properly making decision – Application dismissed
The second respondents, Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council, issued the Wigan Frith Street Compulsory Purchase Order 1998 (the order), which related to 1.25ha of land (the land) situated adjacent to Frith Street, Wigan. The council proposed that the land should be used for the provision of a second access road to Robin Park, Wigan’s new football and rugby stadium. The access would lead into, or be part of, an extensive adjacent scheme known as the Saddle Junction Improvement Scheme. The land included plot 3, which contained a waste transfer station, storage of reclaimed soil and hardcore, a weighbridge, car park and plant storage area together with offices that administered the waste transfer and recycling business and also a skip-hire business operated by the claimant objector on land on the opposite side of Frith Street. A public inquiry into an application to confirm the order was held by an inspector. The applicant claimed that the acquisition of plot 3 would effectively render impossible the business carried on from it and the adjoining land. The inspector recommended that the order should not be confirmed. The Secretary of State did not accept the recommendation and confirmed the order. The applicant applied for the decision to be quashed. It was submitted that the Secretary of State had: first, failed to give any adequate or intelligible reasons for his decision; second, had not taken into account or had disregarded material considerations; and third, applied the wrong statutory test.
Held: The application was dismissed.
1. The Secretary of State had distinguished the loss of the business as a material consideration and had carried out a balancing or weighing exercise and concluded that the business losses were outweighed by the public interest of proper planning in the area. He had fully discussed the issue that the road scheme departed from the development plan in his decision letter and there was no reason to suggest that it had not been in his mind throughout.
2. Looking at the decision letter as a whole, it could not be concluded that the Secretary of State had applied the wrong statutory test.
John Barrett (instructed by Platt & Fishwick, of Wigan) appeared for the applicant; Ashley Underwood (instructed the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions; the second respondents, Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council, did not appear and were not represented.
Thomas Elliott, barrister
