The claimant obtained planning permission to install solar panels on the south-facing wall of his residential property. Subsequently, his next-door neighbour, whose detached residence lay immediately to the south of the claimant’s property, applied to the local planning authority for planning permission for a rear extension. The claimant objected to the grant of planning permission on various grounds, including that the proposed development would obstruct sunlight to his solar panels and thus adversely affect his ability to generate electricity from them, but the local authority granted planning permission. On the claimant’s claim for judicial review of that decision, a central issue was whether the effect of daylight on his solar panels ought to have been taken into account as a material planning consideration for the purposes of section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, having regard, inter alia, to section 19(1A) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, as inserted, requiring development plan documents to include policies relating to mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, and the provisions of the National Planning Policy Framework on renewable energy.
On the claim—
Held, both section 19(1A) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and the National Planning Policy Framework indicated that mitigation of climate change was a legitimate planning consideration. The fact that both spoke in broad terms did not mean that their message vanished at the point where consideration had to be given to a specific proposal. Nor did the fact that they related to new, rather than existing, development, affect the materiality of climate change as a consideration. The planning considerations that were in play when determining whether to grant permission for such a development did not disappear as soon as that development had occurred and thus, if the issue of climate change was regarded as having a material planning bearing on particular proposed development, it could not logically become immaterial once the development had taken place. That being so, and given that both the relevant development plan and the Framework recognised the positive contribution that could be made to climate change by even small-scale renewable energy schemes, a local planning authority was not entitled to reject as immaterial, in planning terms, the effect that another development proposal might have upon a renewable energy system such as the claimant’s solar panels. Moreover, the authority had failed to take into account material considerations in reaching the conclusion that any interference with the claimant’s solar panels would be interference merely with a private right, which it was not the function of the planning regime to protect. It had failed to appreciate that interference with the solar panels was a material planning consideration by reason of the part played by them in addressing, however modestly on an individual scale, issues of climate change, and had further failed to consider why a person’s ability to use the sunlight reaching his property to generate electricity fell into a materially different category from the same person’s ability to enjoy sunlight falling into his living room or garden. While a planning authority might legitimately conclude that reduced sunlight to a living room deserved to be ascribed greater weight than interference with solar panels, or vice versa, it could not legitimately reject interference with solar panels as having any material bearing. The local authority’s decision was therefore unlawful and, there being no grounds for denying relief, the grant of planning permission was quashed accordingly (paras 34, 36–37, 39, 44–47, 59, 60).
Robin Green (instructed directly) for the claimant.
Matthew Henderson (instructed by Head of Legal Services, Medway Council and Gravesham Borough Council Shared Legal Service) for the local planning authority.
The neighbour did not appear and was not represented.