[2025] EWHC 1967 (Admin)

Ground 2 focuses upon DL[70] as set out above. Paragraph 54 of the 2021 NPPF, current at the time of the decision, requires planning conditions restricting permitted development rights to have ‘clear justification’. The inspector does not expressly reference this in his decision, and the Claimant submits that he ignored this.

In Bloor Homes East Midlands Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2014] EWHC 754 (Admin) at [19], Lindblom J, as he then was, set out seven familiar principles in dealing with challenges to decisions in planning cases. The sixth was as follows:

“ Because it is reasonable to assume that national planning policy is familiar to the Secretary of State and his inspectors, the fact that a particular policy is not mentioned in the decision letter does not necessarily mean that it has been ignored (see, for example, the judgment of Lang J. in Sea Land Power & Energy Limited v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2012] EWHC 1419 (QB), at paragraph 58).”

PPG explains and clarifies NPPF (see Mead Realisations Ltd v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2025] EWCA Civ 32). In my judgment it is clear from DL[70] that the inspector had regard to the tests set out in PPG in relation to the removal of permitted development rights and clearly appreciated the need for justification. This he gave, namely to prevent a further outbuilding being erected with the resulting harm which he had identified in permutation 2.

Ground 2 fails.