On the requirement for substantial compliance by a notice for exemption from the levy, see R (Shropshire Council) v SoS (2019) EWHC 16 (Admin). The decision of the Court of Appeal in R v SoS, ex p Jeyeanthan (2000) 1 WLR 354 was distinguished.  The Judge said:-

“29. Jeyeanthan helps to answer the question what is to happen if a person undertaking a particular act has failed to comply with all the requirements prescribed for that act. But that can be a relevant question only if the actor has actually engaged in the regulated conduct. If the path of compliance has not, so to speak, been trodden at all, there is likely to be little scope or need for analysis of error or omissions in attempted or partial compliance. Read more »

The duty of the Secretary of State under Directive 2008/50 and the Air Quality Standards Regulations 2010 is to ensure the preparation and implementation of an Air Quality plan. The duty as “competent authority” does not extend to exercising his power in any particular way, such as by calling in a planning application for his own determination. So held in R (Shirley) v SoS, Canterbury City Council Interested Party (2019) EWCA Civ 22.

On the relationship between the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive and the Habitats Directive, see the Opinion of Advocate-General Kokott, delivered on 24 January 2019, in Cases C-43/18 and C-321/18.

There is an entitlement to compensation in respect of any loss or damage directly attributable to any prohibition contained in a stop notice. However, such compensation has to be for an ascertainable loss. The loss has to be attributable to the prohibition in the stop notice, not some other cause. The entitlement to compensation is there predicated on there being, in the relevant period, some actual loss, not a hypothetical one. What matters is the circumstances as they actually were while the notice was in force, not some other, imaginary, scenario.

Moreover, compensation is excluded for the prohibition of “any activity” that “when the notice is in force, constitutes or contributes” to a breach of panning control. It is immaterial that the activity might not be in breach of planning control by the time it was carried out.

So held in Huddleston v Bassetlaw District Council (2019) EWCA Civ 21.

R (Liverpool Open and Green Spaces Community Interest Company) v Liverpool City Council (2019) EWHC 55 (Admin) was two claims by the applicant community interest company (LOGS) against the grant of planning permissions by the defendant local planning authority (the LPA). The first permits relocation and laying out of a miniature railway with associated buildings and parking. The second permission is for the building of 39 new dwellings and conversion of a historic house and grounds into

12 apartments. The site for these proposed developments is an area of open land at Calderstones Park, Liverpool (the park). LOGS is concerned to prevent the developments which, it says, would unlawfully change the character of the park. Read more »