Challenge to order stopping up highway

This was a successful challenge to a decision of the National Transport Casework Team, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, to make an order “stopping up” highway land (i.e. removing public rights of way) at Station Road, Knowle, in the borough of Solihull.

We were instructed by the Open Spaces Society (OSS), which was concerned about the precedent set by the stopping up order. The statutory challenge, brought under s. 287 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, raised three grounds. It was contended that in making the Order, the Secretary of State acted unlawfully (1) by declining to convene an inquiry without “special circumstances” being demonstrated, (2) by failing to properly consider whether the extent of the stopping up was actually necessary (and erroneously relying on this analysis having been undertaken at the planning application stage, and (3) by wrongly excluding from the assessment relevant considerations.

After receiving our pre-action letter, the Secretary of State agreed to a consent order which quashed the decision, accepting that there was a failure adequately to consider and explain why he regarded
the full extent of the stopping up to be necessary, or why either maintenance or landscaping
necessitated permanent stopping up. The Secretary of State also agreed in the order to reconsider whether or not to hold a public inquiry, and to pay the Claimant’s reasonable costs of the claim.