County councillor representative of and resident in area subject to planning decision - prejudicial interest requiring withdrawal from meeting considering planning application - requirement not avoided by attendance in personal rather than representative capacity

R (Richardson and another) v North Yorkshire County Council and another: CA (Lords Justice Simon Brown, Keene and Scott Baker): 19 December 2003

The applicants, a county councillor and resident and a parish councillor and resident brought a judicial review challenge to a grant of planning permission by North Yorkshire County Council to a company for a quarry extension at Ripon.

The permission related to environment impact assessment development within the Town and Country Planning (Environment Impact Assessment) (England and Wales) Regulations 1999 (SI No 293 of 1999).

Both applicants contended that two requirements of the regulations had not been complied with.

The county councillor further contended that he had been unlawfully excluded from the meeting at which the decision was made in breach of the first secretary of state's model code of conduct for local authorities.

B Ltd appeared as an interested party.

Robert McCracken QC and Gregory Jones (instructed by Richard Buxton, Cambridge) for the applicants; Timothy Straker QC and Paul Greatorex (instructed by the Head of Legal Services, North Yorkshire County Council, Northallerton) for the council; Philip Sales and James Maurici (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the first secretary of state; Timothy Hill (instructed by Mills & Reeve, Cambridge) for B Ltd.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that the council had fulfilled both its duty to state in its decision that it had taken environment impact into consideration and its duty to make available for public inspection a statement containing the main reasons and considerations on which the decision was made; that the requirement in the model code of conduct for local authorities that a member with a prejudicial interest in a council matter had to withdraw from the room when the matter was being considered, applied to all members of the council and not simply to those who were members of the committee holding the meeting; that furthermore, nothing in the code displaced that requirement to entitle a member to attend such a meeting in his personal capacity as opposed to his representative capacity; that, accordingly, the council had been entitled to exclude the councillor.