Devon Solar Farm Judicial Review

Richard Buxton Solicitors represented the environmental charity, CPRE Devon, in a challenge to Torridge District Council’s decision to grant planning permission for a 42MW photovoltaic solar farm at Pyworthy, Devon. The hearing took place in Bristol before HHJ Jarman KC in June 2022.

Following pre-action correspondence, the Council confirmed that they would not be resisting the Judicial Review. However, the Interested Party (Renewable Energy Systems Limited), contested the claim.   Permission on all grounds had been granted by Mr Justice Kerr in February 2022.

The Claimant’s grounds of challenge were that the Council acted unlawfully by:

• Misleading Members in their Officer Report as to the landscape evidence before them, in particular, failing to advise the Committee that its own sensitivity assessment indicated that the area where the solar farm is to be sited is only suitable for farms of up to 10 hectares (whereas this solar farm is 66 hectares). Furthermore, the Officer’s Report failed to inform members of the critical finding of the authority’s review that solar PV would become one of the landscape’s defining characteristics (and as a consequence was in breach of one of the local policies;
• Failing to advise Members about the compliance or conflict of the Application with key Local Plan policies dealing with landscape impact; and
• Irrationally concluding that the Application would be consistent with those Local Plan policies dealing with landscape impact.

On Ground One, the Judge said that the members are to be taken to be informed readers with knowledge of the policies and documents and would have appreciated the conflict with the sensitivity assessment.  He concluded that “It is tolerably clear that the officer and the members preferred the site specific and up to date evidence in the appraisal and the review. That was something they were entitled to do and involved planning judgment.”  In addition the reference to changing the landscape character was to be considered in the context where  the effects of the development would not be noticeable outside of the study area of 2km. In his judgment, reading the report fairly as a whole, the summary was not significantly misleading.

On Ground Two, the Judge ruled that it is likely to have been obvious to the informed members that the application gave rise to competing interests of protecting the landscape and promoting renewable energy. In those circumstances, it was not essential to deal expressly with the extent of any conflict with the particular policies and instead it was  necessary to consider whether the proposed development complies with the plan as a whole

On Ground Three, the Judge concluded that although other officers and members may have taken a different view as to whether the proposed development conflicted with certain policies (as the officer at another nearby development had done), the high hurdle of showing that there is no logic to the conclusions of the officer and the members had not been reached.

The Judicial Review was therefore unsuccessful.