Appeal won with full costs

We recently won, on behalf of a client, an appeal against South Oxfordshire District Council with full reimbursement of costs after planning permission was refused for unreasonable and unfair reasons. 

Our client originally applied for planning permission for one additional dwelling on a site in Didcot in January 2020.
 
The proposal was refused. The Planning Officer's decision was based on the fact that there was no evidence of how surface water would be drained after the building had been erected. This was despite the fact that the site is not in an area at risk of flooding (Flood Zone 1) and that the onus is upon the Council to produce evidence to demonstrate its concerns and substantiate its objections with objective analysis. 

We advised the client to follow up this decision with an appeal based on a number of factors:

• It was a minor site, not within an area susceptible to pluvial and fluvial flooding;
• Our client would be able to erect a different type of structure, ie an extension, of the same size, under Class A of the GPDO (General Permitted Development Order) which the LLFA would have had no control or input over and its geological impact would be the same as the proposed structure,
• The LLFA requested burdensome and unnecessary documentation prior to planning permission being granted and their requests were not consistent with requests made on comparable and recent cases on the same road; and
• There are sufficient Grampian conditions to ensure that all surface water matters can be dealt with by means of a suitably worded condition.

The appeal was upheld and planning permission granted, and full costs awarded to our client on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.

Mark Doodes MRTPI said:
"It is imperative that LPAs enforce policies uniformly across all planning decisions. It was unreasonable to ask a member of the public to foot the bill for excess surface water and river flooding protections ahead of planning permission being granted, especially when others in the same street had not had to. A suitably worded condition would have been a more pragmatic and fair approach. I am delighted we were able to secure this win and our client is now able to build his new property despite significant unhelpful delays. This appeal will have far reaching consequences in the area going forward."


More details on the case can be found here.