Central Bedfordshire Council has recently been at the Court of Appeal, the final stage in a process that started when a planning consent was contested by neighbouring Luton Borough Council and taken to judicial review.
Both the High Court and last week the Court of Appeal threw out Luton’s case. I doubt I am alone in trying to work out whether judicial reviews come with any redeeming features. Can they seriously be considered an appropriate tool in the planning process when all they achieve are development delays, huge legal costs and an assault on proactive planning?
In our case, Luton objected to our planning consent for a 5,150-home urban extension adjacent to Luton’s border. While all credit goes to developers LIH, which supported us throughout, they must have had their doubts. The goodwill of developers with aspirations to build new housing is vital and it’s only a matter of time before the private sector will walk away.
The theory is that we have a democratic system in place that allows local communities to put their case through consultation, air their views and work with planners and developers to deliver what is needed. Yet all of this can be undermined by what is, more often than not, a politically motivated legal sledgehammer.
In Luton’s case, there is history. They walked away from a joint core strategy that we had been working on together for many years. At the 11th hour they refused to provide the necessary commitment by signing a memorandum of understanding relating to our development strategy, the impact of which was to place the strategy into jeopardy.
They then decided to pursue a judicial review route on a planning application that really should have come as no surprise to them. After that, undeterred by Justice Holgate’s comprehensive decision in the High Court, they took it forward to the Court of Appeal, where they similarly could not get support for any of the points they were pursuing.
What a waste of everyone’s time, not least for the communities that both we and they serve, over a scheme that is intended to deliver much-needed housing and nationally significant infrastructure.
Our message is clear: we will continue to adopt a proactive approach to planning; we will do all we can to assist developers in bringing forward excellent residential or commercial schemes where we have planned for them.
Jason Longhurst is director of regeneration and business at Central Bedfordshire Council
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