Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire loses High Court challenge to gypsy site

The owners of the Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire, a luxury spa hotel set in a restored 18th century manor, have failed in their bid to stop a small gypsy site from setting up nearby. In April last year, Hart District Council granted planning permission for a plot on nearby Farnham Lodge to be developed into a two-dwelling gypsy site with hardstanding for a mobile home and a touring caravan. Gregory Park Holdings Limited, which owns the freehold for the estate near Fleet, challenged the proposals from the time they first emerged, instructing a barrister to get an opinion which it submitted to the council before it made its decision. The council’s planning committee still voted in favour of the proposal, while imposing some conditions. Gregory Park Holding then sought a judicial review to quash the decision. In a hearing at the High Court in London, in July lawyers for the hotel argued that the council has misinterpreted its own policy on gypsy and traveller sites. According to a ruling handed down yesterday, the hotel owner’s lawyer, Andrew Fraser-Urquhart KC, argued that the council’s policy requires the applicant seeking planning permission for a gypsy site to demonstrate a personal need. However, in this case the applicant only demonstrated a general need. “Mr Fraser-Urquhart’s submission is that the identification of the unmet need was simply not enough to meet the requirements of Policy H5(a),” Mr CMG Ockelton, the trial judge, said in his ruling. “What that policy requires, he submits, is for any applicant who seeks planning permission for a gypsy or traveller site in the countryside to show what he calls a ‘personal’ need. By that, he means that any application must demonstrate that the applicant has a need for the development in question. “It follows that if an applicant is silent on this issue, the application cannot be approved consistently with the policy. It further follows that the mere demonstration of a general need for pitches will not suffice. What needs to be demonstrated is that there is a need for the individual applicant to have the particular proposed pitch.” He said that this was consistent with what the council’s policy department had said, and that the council had acted inconsistently in subsequently taking the view that Policy H5(a) was satisfied.” However, the council’s lawyer, Douglas Edwards QC, disagreed. “Mr Edwards submitted that the difficulty with the claimant’s position is that it imposes a requirement of a ‘personal need’, which does not appear in the policy at all,” the judge said. “In the policy, the phrase ‘a need’ is not qualified,” he said. “A general need, he submitted, is a need.” In his ruling, the judge backed the council’s interpretation. “What has to be shown is a need for the development,” he said in his ruling. “I am not at all persuaded that the words should be glossed as the claimant suggests, by the insertion of the word ‘personal’, or any other requirement that the need should be a need experienced by the applicant. “The applicant has to show that there is a need, not that he (or she) has a need. As a matter of ordinary language, a wealthy person may be able to demonstrate a need for more to be done to relieve poverty; a person who has no interest in sports may recognise a need for sports facilities.” “I therefore hold that on its true construction Policy H5(a) is capable of being satisfied if the local planning authority consider that there is a need for gypsy sites which the proposed development will help to meet. It follows that the decision under challenge was not unlawful. The application for judicial review is dismissed.” Gregory Park Holding Ltd v Hart District Council KBD; Planning Court (Mr CMG Ockelton, Vice President of the Upper Tribunal) 3 October 2022