Appeal 6001494

I decline to determine the appeal and propose to take no further action.

An application for costs has been made by the appellant, against Leicester City Council. This matter is subject to a separate decision.

Article 7 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (the Order) requires planning applications to include all plans, drawings and information necessary to describe the proposed development. Under Section 327A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (the Act), a local planning authority must not accept an application that fails to comply with any statutory requirements relating to its form or manner of submission.

The Council operates a local validation list, organised by development type, which sets out the specific validation requirements for each category. For new dwellinghouses, some requirements are mandatory, while others apply only when certain thresholds are met. The Council issued a letter to the appellant stating that the application was invalid due to several omissions, including the absence of an appropriate [name], a suitable [name], and adequate information relating to [name] and Ecology. The appellant maintains that these documents were submitted and argues that, irrespective of their content, any assessment of their quality should form part of the determination process rather than validation.

The original application form stated that the development was not subject to the [name] under Paragraph 13 of Schedule 7A of the Act. A revised form was later submitted, accompanied by a Biodiversity Habitats Plan, a BNG metric and an Arboricultural Assessment. However, this material is limited and does not include a [name] report setting out the required pre-and post‐development values and measures. The submitted plan provides minimal detail and does not meet the requirements of the Council’s Validation List.

The Sustainable Drainage Strategy is limited to three lines, which essentially state that foul drainage would tie into the existing dwelling, with surface water dealt with by soakaways and swales, which could be identified on a plan, subject to a condition. The Validation List sets out the requirements of this matter, which the extremely limited submission does not meet. Before an application is assessed, these details must be before the Council, as this is an essential requirement by the local list for a development of this type.

Landscaping is an essential validation requirement for this type of development under the Council’s Validation List. For validation purposes, it is generally sufficient to show the location of existing and proposed trees and to provide a broad indication of the planting strategy, with further detail potentially required later in the planning process. The original submission stated only that the site would be mostly laid to lawn and included two images. A revised submission provided a Landscape Plan detailing landscape features, ecological enhancements and proposed fauna. Having regard to the requirements of the local list, this information is sufficient to meet the validation requirement for landscaping.

The appellant argues that all required documents were submitted and that their content is irrelevant to validation, with any assessment of quality belonging to the determination stage. However, several of the matters raised at validation have clear minimum evidential requirements. While parties may disagree with the conclusions of individual reports, the Council must have sufficient information to undertake an assessment in the first place. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that the minimum validation requirements are properly met before an application is submitted. I therefore conclude that the Council was correct in refusing to validate the application. The Council has also raised additional validation concerns in its appeal response. In the interests of fairness, and given my finding that the Council acted properly in not validating the application, I have not considered those matters further.

I am also mindful that, even if I had found that the appellant had provided sufficient detail to meet the validation requirements, Part 4 of the Order sets out mandatory consultation procedures. No consultation has taken place with statutory consultees or interested parties. Determining the appeal in these circumstances would prevent those parties from having the opportunity to comment, contrary to the requirements of the Order.

An Inspector can only consider the merits of an application and determine the appeal if they are satisfied that a valid planning application has been made in the first instance. Whether the Council has validated the application and issued a decision letter is not determinative and the Inspector must consider and reach a view on validity themselves. If an application is invalid, the Secretary of State has no jurisdiction to determine any appeal, and it must be turned away as invalid.

In this case, I find that the application did not comply with the requirements of Leicester City Council’s Validation List for this type of development. The Council was therefore correct in refusing to validate it. The extent of additional information needed to render the submission valid goes beyond what is permitted under the Act, the Order and the Procedural Guide: Planning Appeals - England. As a result, I am unable to determine the appeal, and it is unnecessary to consider the planning merits further.

Section 79(6) of the Act provides that if, before or during the determination of an appeal, the Secretary of State forms the opinion that planning permission for that development could not have been granted by the local planning authority, he may decline to determine the appeal.

For the reasons given above, I conclude the appeal to be invalid. The procedural shortcomings of the current submission are not readily capable of any reasonable remedy. I am therefore not in a position to progress matters and cannot consider the planning merits of the case. Accordingly, I must decline to determine the appeal and propose to take no further action.