The 2012 NPPF: A Digest of Decisions

Section 7 – Requiring good design

NPPF 56-68

NPPF 60

Scrivens v SSCLG [2013] EWHC 3549 (Admin); [2014] JPL 521, Collins J
Richard Turney appeared for the Secretary of State

The Claimant argued that, in order to achieve the delivery of near-zero energy buildings, buildings which are radically out of character must be required. Collins J held: “There is some force in the concern expressed by the applicant, but it is permissible for a decision maker to decide as a matter of judgment that this house in this location however satisfactory in meeting energy requirements cannot be permitted because of its harm to a particular area.” [21]

NPPF 64

Horsham DC v SSCLG [2015] EWHC 109 (Admin)

“Paragraph 64 is one of 13 paragraphs in the NPPF which explain what the Government wants the design of new development to achieve. Properly understood, that paragraph of the NPPF does not seek to define “poor design” simply as design which “fails to take the opportunities available for improving the character and quality of an area and the way it functions”. It means that design which, in the decision-maker’s judgment, fails in this particular respect is one kind of “poor design” and, in principle, should not be accepted. But it does not say, and in my view it does not mean, that a proposal which does not take every conceivable opportunity to improve the character and quality of an area, or which does not do as well in this respect as some alternative proposal might have done, must therefore automatically be rejected. To read that concept into the policy would be to misconstrue it.” [57]
“The suggestion that the inspector could not approve Barratt’s scheme if he thought a better one might have been proposed is misconceived. That idea is not implicit in paragraph 64 of the NPPF.” [86]