[2025] EWHC 2127 (Admin)

Dr Bowes submits that the Inspector, knowing that the Local Plan had recently been adopted and had addressed GTAA 2021, would know or ought to have known that that there was an EI Report and considered it. Had he done so, he would have had to acknowledge that the EI’s conclusions on deliverability were “obviously material” to the matters that he had to decide, and, if he was going to depart from them, supply reasons for doing so. Reliance is placed on North Wiltshire DC v SS for the Environment (1993) 65 P&CR 137 where it was held that whilst an inspector is free to depart from an earlier decision which is materially indistinguishable, he ought to have regard to the importance of ensuring consistent decisions and must give reasons for departing from the earlier decision.

As to the fact that no party, not least the Council, drew the Inspector’s attention to the EI Report or any part thereof, Dr Bowes submits that in the circumstances of the present case, it was unreasonable for the Inspector not to have regard to a recent evaluation of the deliverable sites that was so obviously material to the assessment before him. Reliance is placed on DLA Delivery Ltd v Baroness Cumberlege of Newick [2018] PTSR 2063 in which the Court of Appeal (Lindblom LJ) held that there may be circumstances in which it would be unreasonable for the Secretary of State not to have regard to an earlier appeal decision bearing on the issues before him even though none of the parties has relied on the previous decision or brought it to the Secretary of State’s attention: see [34] of DLA Delivery.

Mr Grant submits that unlike the North Wiltshire and DLA Delivery cases, the Inspector was conducting a fundamentally different exercise based on different evidence and in respect of a different 5-year period. Furthermore, the Council’s position before the Inspector was not wholly aligned with that of the EI, in particular, as to windfall and overall supply. In these circumstances, including the fact of non-reliance, it is unarguable that it was unreasonable for the Inspector not to look beyond what was available to him. He was entitled to assume that each side had put forward everything which they wished to be considered, and this ground is really nothing more than an attempt to backfill an evidential hole of the Claimant’s own making.

Mr Whale submits that it is absurd to suggest that the Inspector ought to have somehow tracked down the EI Report of his own volition, adopted a figure as to need in that report which the Council itself did not adopt and treated as obviously material a document which the Council itself did not deem worthy of mention.