Court rules on the application of the power to issue section 73 permissions (R (Fiske) v Test Valley BC)

Article summary

Planning analysis: In Fiske v Test Valley BC, the court had to consider the interplay between several planning permissions: a permission granted in 2017 for a solar park which referred in its operative wording and in one of its conditions to a substation, details of which were approved in 2020; a permission granted in 2021 for a new substation elsewhere on the site to serve the solar park; and a permission granted in 2022 under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA 1990) varying the original 2017 permission so that it could operate in conjunction with the substation permitted by the 2021 permission. The court held that the grant of the 2022 permission was unlawful because (i) there was a conflict between the wording of the grant (which referred to a substation) and the revised condition requiring development in accordance with a plan that omitted any substation, and (ii)...