Council to pay costs over office appeal
The Royal Borough will have to cough up costs for an appeal against its decision to refuse an office in the centre of Cookham.
The planning inspector said the council’s reasons for refusal ‘contained vague and generalised assertions’ about the proposal’s impact – and its refusal was therefore ‘unreasonable’.
During the first COVID lockdown, applicants began work to transform a dilapidated shed at the back of Cookham Arcade into a small office, and sought retrospective planning permission for this conversion.
The plan drew concerns early on, with several objections from members of the public and a recommendation for refusal by Cookham Parish Council.
People were concerned that having an office there would increase noise and other nuisance for neighbours, as it is adjacent to residential gardens.
But applicant Jolyon Burgess, director of Mayfair Real Estate Investments Ltd
(MREI), wrote in the planning proposal that the office had been running for about a year with no noise complaints.
Nonetheless, the council concluded that the change would create ‘increased commercialisation’, affecting the character of the Cookham High Street Conservation Area.
Moreover, in the absence of on-site parking, the change of use would generate increased street parking demand ‘which is harmful to highway safety,’ they wrote.
But MREI refused to go quietly and the matter has been rumbling on for nearly four years, with MREI finally winning the appeal last month.
The matter has now wrapped up, with RBWM ordered to foot the bill for the appeal costs. This is unusual. Normally, each party meets their own expenses.
However, the Planning Inspectorate can choose to award costs if one party is deemed to have caused the other ‘unnecessary or wasted expense’.
The inspector noted that the decision was made against the advice of RBWM planning officers by the council’s Development Management Committee (in April 2022).
Though the panel is free to do this, the council must demonstrate the decision was based on ‘sound and defensible evidence’ at appeal.
The inspector assigned to this case, Ms E Catcheside, wrote in her report:
“The council has based its identification of harm to the significance of the [conservation area] on a vague statement about ‘increased commercialisation and associated activity.’
“In the absence of meaningful elaboration in the appeal evidence, the reasoning behind this conclusion is unclear.”
RBWM also asked for documents, including a highways impact assessment, that the inspector thought went too far above what was needed, given the application’s ‘modest scale.’
Ms Catcheside also thought the Borough missed an opportunity to use other tools at its disposal to limit harm from the small office, such as simply imposing conditions.
Therefore, RBWM’s behaviour was ‘unreasonable’, concluded Ms Catcheside, who awarded them to pay costs accordingly.