Planning

Planning agreement - developer agreeing to construct road conditional on grant of planning permission for development - agreement valid even if no connection between development and construction of roadJA Pye (Oxford) Ltd v South Gloucestershire District Council and others: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, Lords Justices Peter Gibson and Latham): 29 March 2001The claimant sought planning permission to develop land, offering to enter into an agreement with the county council under section 52 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 to build a road, conditional upon the grant of planning permission for that development.

The county council granted permission and a section 52 agreement was entered into.

Part of the land for the road was conveyed to a district council for 5 and later to the claimants for 428,000.

The road was constructed.

The claimants brought an action against the successors in title to the county council, challenging the validity of the section 52 agreement.

Sir Andrew Morritt V-C, determining a preliminary issue on the hypothesis that the construction of the road was unconnected with the development, upheld the agreement.

The claimants appealed.Michael Barnes QC and John Gilbert Harvey (instructed by Burroughs Day, Bristol) for the claimants.

John Howell QC and Jonathan Seitler (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) for the councils.Held, dismissing the appeal, that the validity of a planning agreement between a developer and a council under section 52 of the 1971 Act, which was conditional upon the grant of planning permission for a proposed development, was not dependent on the existence of a connection between the development and the works for which the agreement provided, so long as proper highway and planning considerations were taken into account in deciding to enter into the agreement; and that if irrelevant matters, such as the offer to build a road, were taken into account in granting the planning permission it might vitiate the permission but not the validity of the agreement