Inner House case concerning a planning appeal by Patersons in respect of the refusal of an application to allow the extraction of minerals at Lamington near Biggar.

Paterson’s planning application was refused by South Lanarkshire Council on 28 March 2012. A subsequent appeal was then refused by a reporter appointed by the Scottish Minister’s on 9 January 2012 on the basis of both the landscape and visual impacts of the proposed development.

Paterson’s appealed to the court on the basis that the reporter had:

• failed to keep in mind the overriding and imperative nature of the need for mineral;
• erred in his interpretation and application of planning policies ENV4 (Protection of the Natural and Built Environment), ENV29 (Regional Scenic Areas and Areas of Great Landscape Value Policy) and MIN2 (Environmental protection hierarchy);
• reached a decision which was perverse or “Wednesbury unreasonable”; and
• failed to use the opportunity to resolve matters by imposing conditions.

The Inner House refused the appeal. It found, when the decision was read as a whole, it could not be suggested that the reporter overlooked, or lost sight of, the overriding and imperative nature of the need for minerals. It also found that the reporter’s interpretation of each of the planning policies had been correct. Further, he had taken all of the positive factors into account before exercising his planning judgement to decide that the positive factors were outweighed by the negative factors and, as such, his decision was not perverse or “Wednesbury unreasonable” (i.e. a decision so unreasonable that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it). With regard to the possibility of imposing conditions, the court found that the reporter had been entitled to be cautious in his approach to suggest conditions when there might be EIA publicity requirements, and moreover the reporter had not had sufficient material before him to enable him to assess the repercussions or consequences of such conditions.

 The full judgement is available from Scottish Courts here.

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