Court of Appeal to decide on Wrecsam's controversial housing plan

The case taken by councillors against a High Court decision to effectively impose a controversial Local Development Plan (“LDP”) on Wrexham Council took place on October 15-16.  

The two-day hearing in the Court of Appeal in London heard arguments from appellant Cllr Marc Jones (on behalf of the majority of councillors opposed to the LDP including the Council Leader) and contrary arguments by barristers acting on behalf of Wrexham Council officers, the Welsh government and four leading housing developers.  

 

The LDP allocates land over a 15-year period for housing, employment, leisure and other uses. In this case it was allocating greenfield sites on three sides of Wrexham for large housing developments that amounted to 3,635 homes. This plan will take up land that separates the town from neighbouring villages. In total, land for 7,700 homes was allocated in the draft LDP.

 

The case could have ramifications way beyond Wrexham, because it is claimed that Welsh councillors do not have the same democratic rights as English councillors. 

In England there is (all parties agreed) a clear right for councillors to vote to reject a local plan, even after a government Inspector has examined it and found it sound. However, the developers and officers claimed that the Labour Government had amended planning laws in Wales to remove this democratic discretion from elected Welsh Councillors. 

 

The government's submission in the court was that councillors in Wales had no choice in law but to vote to accept “their” local plan once it had been examined and deemed sound by Welsh government planning inspectors. 

 

The counter submission by Andrew Parkinson on behalf of the councillors, was striking: "Legislation requires a resolution. A resolution requires a vote. A vote requires a choice." Forcing Councillors to have a debate and then vote when there is only one possible way to lawfully vote would, he argued, render the vote a “charade”. 

 

The three judges asked about an email exchange in which the council's Monitoring Officer Linda Roberts said that failure to vote for the LDP could lead to councillors facing financial penalties, seizure of assets and ultimately jail. Prior to this advice a majority of councillors had twice voted against adopting the LDP (in April and June 2023).

 

The Judges asked whether councillors were obliged to adopt a plan even if new facts emerged after examination that fundamentally change the basis on which the plan was examined. The claim was made by the Welsh Government that councillors must nonetheless adopt the plan in Wales, but Councillors in England by contrast had a discretionary choice to reject the plan as being out-of-date.

 

The barrister representing council officers initially asked the court to understand “one fact” – namely, that when Wrexham councillors rejected the local plan at meetings in April and June 2023 they had put forward no planning reasons for doing so. The Judges immediately turned to the transcripts of council meetings and noted that serious planning concerns had indeed been raised by Wrexham councillors. 

 

The government barrister conceded in response to the Judges questions that the Labour government in Cardiff Bay still has, under the current legislation, the “default power” to impose an LDP on any local authority where a local council has voted to reject it. The government had chosen not to use that default power in Wrexham’s case despite the fact that it would have made it clear who was ultimately democratically accountable for the plan’s adoption. 

The government also chose not to engage with Wrexham Council, whose leader Mark Pritchard asked for a meeting after the second vote against adoption. 

Instead, a consortium of (at that time) seven large housing developers took the council to court in a bid to reverse the democratic vote. This was successful in the High Court in November 2023 and this was the ruling that was being challenged in the Court of Appeal. It was not explained why several developers had left the case in the meantime. 

 

Wrexham's current plan is due to run from 2013-28 so only has three years left before a new plan will be needed.