Try asking the following...
Judgment
Mr Justice Lewis :
INTRODUCTION
This is a claim for judicial review of a decision of Aylesbury Vale District Council (“the Council”) of 10 September 2014 making the Winslow Neighbourhood Plan (“the Neighbourhood Plan”). Winslow is a market town in Buckinghamshire with 4,500 residents. In summary, Policy 2 of the Neighbourhood Plan established a settlement boundary and provided that development outside the settlement boundary would only be permitted in exceptional circumstances. Policy 3 allocated land for sites within the settlement boundary for an indicative number of 455 new dwellings.
The claimant is a developer. It wished to develop three sites in the Winslow neighbourhood area. Its sites were outside the settlement boundary identified in Policy 2 and were not allocated as sites for housing under Policy 3. The claimant challenges the lawfulness of the Neighbourhood Plan and seeks to challenge the reasoning of an examiner who examined the Neighbourhood Plan prior to its adoption and recommended that it be submitted to a referendum and, by extension, the lawfulness of the decision of the Council to make the Neighbourhood Plan following a vote in favour of the Neighbourhood Plan at the referendum held in July 2014.
The principal complaint is that it was not permissible for the Neighbourhood Plan to include policies relating to a settlement boundary or the allocation of sites for housing at a time when the local planning authority had not yet adopted a development plan document containing strategic policies for meeting the objectively assessed housing needs of the district.
The claimant also contends that the examiner failed to have regard to relevant planning guidance when considering the site assessment carried out as part of the process of preparing the Neighbourhood Plan. The claimant further contends that the examiner failed properly to assess whether the Neighbourhood Plan satisfied the requirement relating to the preparation of a strategic environmental assessment report. Finally the claimant contends that the examiner failed to give adequate, intelligible reasons for his conclusions.
THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK
Planning permission is required for development: see section 57 of the 1990 Act . The Section 70 (2) of that Act provides, so far as material, that, in dealing with such an application the authority shall have regard to:
“(a) the provisions of the development plan, so far as material to the application;
(b) any local finance consi