Five-year housing land supply and ‘tilted balance’ under previous version of NPPF (Cheshire East Council v Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government and others)

Table of contents

• What are the practical implications of the judgment?
• What was the background?
• What did the court decide?

Article summary

Planning analysis: Freddie Humphreys, barrister at Kings Chambers, examines a High Court decision refusing a local planning authority’s application to quash a grant of outline planning permission by a planning inspector. The planning inspector had applied the ‘tilted balance’ in favour of granting permission in paragraph 14 of the previous version of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), having relied on the assessment of the deliverability of the five-year housing supply in two other inspectors’ previous decision letters regarding proposed developments in the authority’s area.