LC-2023-000734 - [2025] UKUT 00058 (LC)

By the Directions Order the parties were given permission to call expert evidence in the disciplines of telecommunications and planning, limited to one expert per party in each discipline.

Vodafone instructed Rhys Enfield as an expert in telecommunications. The Respondents instructed Brian Collins as an expert in telecommunications. The questions which these experts were asked to address essentially related to the feasibility, in terms of technical requirements, of moving the Active ECA from the Masts (the Vodafone Mast and the MBNL Mast) to the New Tower and in terms of the ability of the operators to provide their network services from the New Tower as opposed to the Masts. Each expert produced a report and a supplemental report, and the experts combined to produce a joint statement. In the event the parties elected not to call their telecommunications experts to give oral evidence at the Trial, and their evidence was barely referred to in the submissions of the parties. Accordingly, and so far as the evidence of the telecommunications experts is relevant to what we have to decide, we are confined to the written evidence of the experts.

The opposite was the case in relation to the planning experts. Vodafone instructed Norman Gillan as an expert in planning. The Respondents instructed Saleem Shamash as an expert in planning. The questions which the planning experts were asked to address essentially related to the issue of whether Icon was, as a condition of the Prior Approval, required to remove the Masts and to migrate the Active ECA on the Masts to the New Tower. Each expert produced a report and a supplemental report, and the experts combined to produce a joint statement. There were considerable differences of expert opinion between Mr Gillan and Mr Shamash. The cross examination of each expert occupied the best part of a day of the Trial, and the planning issues also occupied a substantial part of the closing submissions.

Given the differences of expert opinion between Mr Gillan and Mr Shamash, we shall reserve our general observations on their evidence to our determination of the planning issues, at a later stage in this decision.

We now turn to our analysis and determination of the Preliminary Issues.