Griffiths and another v City and County of Swansea

Compulsory purchase order — Valuation of land — Land benefiting from outline planning permission — Date at which reserved matters would have been approved — Whether Lands Tribunal erring in approach to nearby development — Appeal dismissed In 1996, by a compulsory purchase order, the predecessor of the appellant local authority acquired land owned by the respondents at Llansamlet, Swansea. The land had the benefit of outline planning permission for a mixed-use development, which included a residential element. The permission had been granted against the background of a structure plan, which required the release of land for a target number of new dwellings by 2006, and the appellants’ development strategy, which proposed new housing areas in Llansamlet and a more self-contained “village” to the north, at Tregof Farm. It was a term of the permission that the development should be implemented in accordance with a phasing programme, to be agreed with the appellants in accordance with the development strategy. The Lands Tribunal assessed compensation for the acquisition on the basis of two findings: (i) it was permissible, under sections 14 to 16 of the Land Compensation Act 1961, to take into account the outline planning permission; and (ii) approval of reserved matters would have been granted for the development of 60 houses within two years of the 1996 valuation date. In reaching the latter conclusion, the tribunal took account of the requirement to meet the housing target and the greater suitability of the land for development when compared with alternative sites. It found that the presumption against piecemeal development would be overridden by these factors and that the development would be accepted by the appellants as phase 1. A 1998 housing development at Tregof Farm, which did not immediately link up with the existing village envelope at Llansamlet, was described as “the key to the question”. The appellants appealed against the tribunal’s second finding. They contended that it had erred in treating the Tregof Farm development as the key to the issue because, inter alia, when determining what value land would have had to a developer in 1996, it was improper to consider events that had taken place in 1998. Held: The appeal was dismissed. Per Waller and Latham LJJ: On the basis of the tribunal’s first finding, the valuation task was to determine the sum that a potential developer would have been prepared to pay for the land given that it had an extant outline permission for residential development, or, alternatively, that planning permission for residential development would have been granted at some future time. It therefore had to answer the question as to what a potential developer would, at the valuation date, have been prepared to anticipate as the timescale within which the detailed permission was likely to be granted. It was consequently impermissible to take account of the development at Tregof Farm. However, despite describing that development as “the key to the question”, the tribunal had been using it merely to emphasise or confirm the conclusion that it had already reached. It had not acted irrationally in using it in that way, having expressly acknowledged the clear difference between Tregof Farm and the land in question. Per Neuberger LJ: The tribunal had taken the 1998 development into account when deciding whether the piecemeal effect of the residential development of the land in question would have been regarded as an impediment to the grant of planning permission. Although it was relying upon it simply as a confirmatory or secondary factor, it was still not entitled to take account of it. However, the tribunal’s decision was unlikely to have been any different had it not taken the 1998 development into account. Milwyn Jarman QC (instructed by the solicitor to City and County of Swansea) appeared for the appellants; John Blackmore (instructed by John Collins & Partners, of Swansea) appeared for the respondents. Sally Dobson, barrister