Developer withdraws from proceedings over Buckinghamshire neighbourhood plan

Aylesbury Vale District Council adopted, or 'made' the Winslow neighbourhood plan (WNP) in September. The WNP designated a settlement boundary, outside which proposals for housing development should only granted in exceptional circumstances, and allocated five sites to deliver up to 455 homes by 2031.

Developer Gladman Developments (GD), which had unsuccessfully promoted three sites for allocation in the WNP, made a judicial review challenge last year to the Council's decision to make the WNP. High Court judge Mr Justice Lewis rejected the challenge, finding that the WNP was lawful and the inspector who examined it had been entitled to recommend it for referendum.

Among the arguments rejected by Mr Justice Lewis was a claim that it was not permissible for the WNP to set a strategic settlement boundary or to allocate sites because these were strategic matters that should be dealt with in development plans and no development plan was in place for the area.

GD submitted an appeal against the High Court decision to the Court of Appeal in March. In a statement published last week, the Council confirmed that GD had withdrawn from the Court of Appeal proceedings.

The Council also confirmed that GD had decided not to proceed with a challenge to the decision of communities secretary Eric Pickles to refuse permission for the developer's outline plans to build 211 homes outside the designated settlement boundary in the WNP.

Pickles had said in his decision letter that he regarded a policy in the National Planning Policy Framework stating that "outside … strategic elements, neighbourhood plans will be able to shape and direct sustainable development" as "more than a statement of aspiration".

Planning expert Jo Miles of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said "the withdrawal by Gladman of its claim against the WNP means that the court of appeal will not have an opportunity to clarify the law on neighbourhood plans in this particular case. The current position therefore remains, as set out by the first instance judge, that a neighbourhood plan can allocate land for housing and designate settlement boundaries, even where there is no up-to-date development plan document setting out strategic policies for housing."

"However earlier this month developer Larkfleet Homes won permission to take its legal challenge to the Uppingham neighbourhood plan to the court of appeal. The proper interpretation of the legislation governing neighbourhood plans therefore looks set to be given further judicial scrutiny by which will be welcomed by councils and developers throughout the country.”