For planning, a nursery isn’t a school, High Court rules

A High Court judge has ruled that, for planning purposes and in real life, a nursery is not a school, and therefore cannot be treated as such under the General Permitted Development Order (GPDO) rules. The case involves an application for GPDO development made by the large nursery chain Bright Horizons in 2017. The nursery chain increased the indoor space of its Watford Nursery in 2017 and applied for a GPDO exemption to Watford Borough Council. It applied under Class M of the rules, which are for “schools, colleges, universities or hospitals”. Watford refused the application, stating that “a nursery is not a ‘school’, Class M is not applicable in this case and therefore the application is refused”. The issue, via the usual process of appeals, found itself before Mr CMG Ockelton, the vice president of the Upper Tribunal (sitting as a judge of the High Court) for trial in October. He has now handed down judgment, ruling in favour of the council. “There cannot, I think, be any doubt that ‘school’ in the sense with which I am concerned is an institution for the provision of education,” he said in his ruling. “It is also clear that the provision of education does not make an institution a school,” he added, and the name of an institution is no help: “The Vale of York Academy is a school, but the London Hairdressing Apprenticeship Academy is not.” Also, bodies that call themselves schools are not always schools, such as law schools, he said. The judge focused in on the “commonly used phrase ‘school age’”, which refers, he said, to “the period in a young person’s life beginning with the requirement to go to school and ending with the age at which a person is too old to have education in school”. “An institution concerned with children below school age is unlikely to be regarded as properly called, without qualification, a school… For these reasons, in my judgment, the unqualified use of the word ‘school’ does not in its ordinary meaning include a nursery.” In this situation, he ruled, the “ordinary meaning” should apply when interpreting the GPDO. The judge concluded that there is “no good reason for giving to the word ‘school’ in the GPDO anything other than its ordinary meaning, which does not include a nursery… I shall therefore dismiss this claim.” Bright Horizons Family Solutions Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government; Watford Borough Council Planning Court (Mr CMG Ockelton, the vice president of the Upper Tribunal sitting as a judge of the High Court), 16 January 2019 To read a case summary of Bright Horizons Family Solutions Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, click here. Image: stock photo – Lydie Gigerichova/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock