Local authority decision to extend conservation area to prevent demolition of building set aside

Failures by local planning authorities to follow defensible decision-making processes leave them open to judicial review and the quashing of such decisions which could be unlawful. A challenge to a local authority’s decision to extend a conservation area to include a building on which it had refused planning permission for redevelopment has succeeded in Future High Street Living (Staines) Limited v Spelthorne Borough Council [2023] EWHC 688 (Admin). The claimant owned the former Debenhams department store at High Street, Staines-on-Thames, which it wished to demolish in order to provide 226 build-to-rent dwellings, commercial units and associated infrastructure works. Its planning application for the scheme – which elicited considerable local objection – was refused by the defendant planning authority in June 2022. Later in June 2022 the defendant extended a conservation area to include the building and other land (“the decision”). In August 2022 the defendant published a supplementary report – by which it purported to review the decision – which concluded that no change should be made. The claimant challenged the decision. Section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 provides for the designation by a local planning authority of conservation areas to preserve areas of special architectural or historic interest the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance. The defendant had failed to take account of the claimant’s representations in response to the consultation at the relevant time and the supplementary report was flawed. The decision was taken as its starting point and the claimant’s representations then considered to see if they were sufficiently persuasive to change it. The supplementary report was not a legally satisfactory response to the failure to consider the claimant’s representations and it could not be said, as the defendant argued, that it was inevitable or even highly likely that the outcome would not have been substantially different if the conduct complained of had not occurred. The officers’ reports were also seriously misleading in omitting to mention Historic England’s refusal to list the building because it was not of special architectural interest, which was raised in the claimant’s representations. This information would have been highly relevant to members deciding on the proposed revision to the conservation area. However, the defendant had not acted unlawfully in making the decision. The evidence did not show more than that the desire to prevent the demolition of the building was “an impetus” rather than “the impetus” for the relevant extensions to the conservation area. Louise Clark is a property law consultant and mediator