AC-2024-LDS-000251 - [2025] EWHC 2256 (Admin)

Solicitors for the claimant wrote a pre-action protocol letter to the LPA, dated 1 November 2024. The four proposed grounds of challenge mirror those subsequently pleaded in this judicial review. No point was taken that the LPA had failed to publish a copy of any planning obligation proposed or entered into in connection with the application, in breach of article 40(3)(b) of the 2015 DMP Order.

The LPA’s solicitors replied on 15 November 2024. They complained that the claimant was wrongly treating the Heybeck Lane and Leeds Road sites as if they were one and the same. They confidently explained – correctly, as the deputy judge later found – that the first two grounds had “no merit”. The LPA did not accept that there was any merit in the third ground but added that:

“any potential for dispute about the scope of the ecology and biodiversity conditions could easily be remedied by the [developer] entering into a simple supplementary planning obligation to undertake to conduct surveys prior to any work that could potentially adversely affect any features of ecological interest on the site”.

Similarly, in relation to the fourth proposed ground of challenge, the LPA’s solicitors asserted that while there was no merit in that ground, any potential dispute about the effect of Schedule 5 to the section 106 agreement could be remedied by a supplementary planning obligation on the developer:

“to carry out, submit and have approved the Biodiversity Assessment prior to any work that could … adversely [sic] the relevant habitats within the site”.