Climate protestors lose Court of Appeal challenge to government’s PDR changes

Climate change campaigners opposed to the government’s changes to permitted development rules have lost the latest stage in their legal challenge. A three-judge panel at the Court of Appeal in London dismissed their case yesterday (20 December), following a hearing in October. The claimant, campaign group Rights: Community: Action – which calls itself a “coalition of campaigners, lawyers, planners, facilitators, writers and scientists, united by a shared commitment to tackle the climate emergency” – is seeking a judicial review of measures that the government has described as “the most radical reforms to our planning system since the Second World War”. The reforms it is opposed to make changes to permitted development rules and use classes, making it easier to build up, demolish and rebuild, and change the use of a property without needing planning permission. The group is seeking to quash three statutory instruments used by the secretary of state to bring in the changes. Rights: Community: Action argues that the reforms were approved too quickly, and without proper consideration of the potential damage they could do. Specifically, they say that they should have been subject to a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) as required by the SEA Directive and the SEA Regulations. However, the group lost its case in November 2020, when two High Court judges ruled that the instruments were lawful. It took the case to appeal, and yesterday the appeal court judges again dismissed its case. In his ruling, Court of Appeal judge Sir Keith Lindblom said: “I… agree with the [High Court’s] conclusion that none of these three statutory instruments was a plan or programme under the SEA Directive, and that the secretary of state did not err in law in making them without undertaking an environmental assessment or carrying out a screening procedure.” R (on the application of Rights: Community: Action) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Court of Appeal (Lindblom LJ, Coulson LJ, Birss LJ) 20 December 2021 Photo © Shutterstock