Consent has been quashed in a recent High Court decision when it was found that a council had failed to adequately take into account the expert statement from its conservation specialist.
IHBC President Trefor Thorpe said: ‘The Institute welcomes this finding by the High Court. It amplifies further a position that we consider both explicit and implicit in planning law: failure to accord sufficient weight to specialist advice places a local planning authority at risk of either an Ombudsman’s investigation of maladministration or, as here, expensive and damaging judicial review!’
Consent from Stratford On Avon District Council for a development of 9 dwellings at Tysoe, Stratford on Avon, has been overturned in the High Court as it determined – and the council agreed – that the council’s specialist conservation advice, which highlighted the harm to the significance of heritage assets, had not been adequately taken into account as material considerations.
The authority also failed to take into account the concerns of English Heritage, while a ‘procedural error’ by the council also had led to its failure to make the specialist heritage and landscape statements publicly available on the website.
The Council conceded that it had failed to properly exercise its duties under the 1990 Act by not giving appropriate weight to the desirability of preserving or enhancing the character and appearance of the conservation area and the setting of listed buildings.
Examples of cases where councils have fallen foul of the law or the Ombudsman due to poor conservation management can be accessed on the Institute’s website
See IHBC’s statements on conservation skills, capacity and responsibilities in local authorities on the website
