“The Local Bodies’ shared concern is that there will be substantial harm caused by the proposals in visual terms and, in particular, to the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The MSA is to be situated in the third Claimant’s parish and the proposals will, the local bodies believe, significantly affect the local residents who they represent. The instant application is made by all five parties because of the common interest which they share in ensuring that a development which they believe to be both unjustified and harmful is properly and adequately considered through the appropriate statutory processes. Given the extremely limited financial resources of the Local Bodies, Welcome Break and Roadchef have considered it appropriate to make themselves fully responsible for the costs of making this application.”
“6. MSAs and other roadside facilities perform an important road safety function by providing opportunities to the travelling public to stop and take a break in the course of their journey. Government advice is that motorists should stop and take a break of at least 20 minutes every two hours. Drivers of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) are subject to a regime of statutory breaks and such facilities offer the opportunity for this. … 9. New and existing roadside facilities are subject to the provisions of theTown and Country Planning Act 1990 and thePlanning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 which together set the framework under which local planning authorities are to consider applications for such developments. The Secretary of State for Transport is designated as a statutory consultee and the Highways Agency exercises this function on his or her behalf, giving advice on applications in respect of road safety and traffic management issues. … 14. The primary function of the SRN [Strategic Road Network] is to facilitate long distance transportation of people and goods. Service areas are signed from the SRN on the basis that they will provide essential services to road users. The potential risk to safety that is created by additional accesses and egresses is balanced by the increase to safety offered by refreshed and alert drivers. … 31. The Highways Agency will continue to assess the impact of any roadside facilities proposal on traffic flow and safety. It may oppose particular developments when the location is considered unsuitable, where, for instance, there are existing capacity or infrastructure constraints. Roadside facility proposals may also be weighed against the achievement of other policy objectives for the SRN. However the LPA [local planning authority] will continue to determine the planning merits of any proposal. … Spacing of Roadside Facilities on Motorways 52. Policy on the spacing of roadside facilities on motorways needs to balance the road safety benefit of allowing drivers regular access to services with the potential detriment to safety, traffic flow and the environment of developments alongside motorways and at motorway junctions. 53. Drivers are encouraged to stop and take a break of at least 20 minutes every two hours. Drivers of HGVs are required by drivers’ hours’ legislation to take a break at specified intervals. Research has shown that up to 20 per cent of accidents on monotonous roads (especially motorways) are caused by tiredness. However, roadside facilities introduce new on-and-off motorway movements that have their own safety implications and may disrupt the free flow of traffic. 54. There is also a need to limit developments alongside motorways and motorway junctions to mitigate the impact of strategic roads on the environment. This applies particularly, though not exclusively, to open countryside and areas of planning restraint such as National Parks, Areas of Outstanding National Beauty (AONBs), the Green Belt and sites that either are themselves, or may affect, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). Finally, any development accessed from a motorway (including roadside facilities) risks the creation of additional local journeys that would not previously have been made. 55. The existing network of MSAs has evolved around the long-standing spacing criterion of 30 miles. This was based on the premise that drivers should be given the opportunity to stop at intervals of approximately half an hour. However, at peak hours, on congested parts of the network, travel between MSAs can take longer than 30 minutes. Further, 90km/h (56 mph) speed limiters for HGVs limit the distance they can travel in 30 minutes to a maximum of 28 miles (45km). Any new application for a core MSA should therefore be considered on the basis of a 28 miles (45km) distance, or 30 minutes travelling time, from the previous core MSA, whichever is the lesser. 56. The absolute minimum acceptable distance between facilities on the same route is 12 miles. 57. All existing MSAs and new facilities that have been registered in the planning systems prior to the date of publication of this document (which subsequently receive planning consent) and any future sites that fill existing gaps in the core network must provide the required features of a site having that status. 58. Where a clear and compelling need and safety case can be demonstrated, applications for an infill service area may be considered. Individual cases will need to be treated on their merits, and it is not possible to prescribe a comprehensive list of the factors which it might be appropriate to consider in every case. There are, nevertheless, a number that are likely to be of importance in virtually all cases. Planning authorities therefore will be expected to have considered at least: • The distance to adjoining roadside facilities; • Evidence (such as queuing on the roadside facility approach roads or lack of parking spaces at times of peak demand) that nearby existing roadside facilities are unable to cope with the need for services; • Evidence of a genuine safety-related need for the proposed facilities (such as, for example), a higher than normal incidence of accidents attributable to driver fatigue; • Whether the roadside facility is justified by the type and nature of the traffic using the road; the need for services may, for example, be lower on motorways used by high percentages of short-distance or commuter traffic than on those carrying large volumes of long-distance movements. 59. Where infill sites are proposed, the Government’s preference will be that they should be located roughly halfway between MSAs, unless it can be shown that an off centre location is more suitable in either operational, safety or spatial planning terms or in its ability to meet a particular and significant need. The Government will not agree to more than one infill site between any two core MSAs. Where the spacing between two existing MSAs is 40 miles or greater, any infill site that might be permitted will also be designated as a core site and must provide the required range of facilities. ………. Social and Environmental Responsibility 158. The Highways Agency expects operators of roadside facilities to conduct business in a socially and environmentally responsible manner and to act in the best interest of their customers, staff and the wider community. Operators should encourage their customer and staff to behave in an environmentally responsible manner by providing recycling litters bins where appropriate, promoting sustainable waste practices and ensuring the premises and surrounding environments are clean safe and secure. Customers should be able to choose from a range of healthy options with products sourced from local providers where possible.”
“10.2 The overriding thrust of the policies seek to protect the rural landscape and land designated as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or special landscape interest. 10.3 The site is at the bottom of a valley with landmark viewpoints on the hills above. The Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty boundary line runs along the east site of the southbound site. The application site itself is not within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. … 10.6 Views of the site are easily obtained from Robinswood Hill and from along the Cotswold escarpment. However, most of these views are long range and higher level and take in most of the extensive panoramic view available out towards the Severn Valley and beyond. When looking down into the site, the motorway is clearly visible. The motorway is less obtrusive in the pleasant overwhelmingly green landscape. This is partly because the motorway is recessed into a slight cutting. This suggests that there may be more scope for the landscape to absorb a new MSA than is thought to be the case by some third parties. … 10.8 Whilst it is considered that the immediate site is rural; however this is severely interrupted by the existing M5 motorway and the urban fringe of Gloucester to the north. 10.9 A further requirement for proposals in the countryside is for planning policies to provide a positive framework for facilitating sustainable development. The provision of an on-line MSA is considered to be sustainable; the traffic is already passing and on route to a terminal destination. 10.10 It is an inescapable fact that an MSA will have an adverse impact on the landscape. It is therefore necessary to examine how adverse that effect might be. In this respect consideration must be given to the comments from the CPRE, Natural England and the Cotswold Conservation Board. 10.11 In this regard SDC commissioned an independent landscape assessment by Nicholas Pearson Associates. They were required to undertake a review of the landscape assessment prepared as part of the Environmental Statement. 10.12 At paragraph 2.31 of their report, Nicholas Pearson Associates comment that; “It can be seen that the impact are generally slight adverse or negligible/slight adverse with only a few character types having a negligible impact. This is consistent with the fact that the development is being proposed within a rural area, away from the settlement boundary, and adjacent to the sensitive landscape of the Cotswold AONB and areas of sensitive high ground of Robinswood Hill.”
“The report by a planning officer to his committee is not and is not intended to provide a learned disquisition of relevant legal principles or to repeat each and every detail of the relevant facts to members of the committee who are responsible for the decision and who are entitled to use their local knowledge to reach it. The report is therefore not susceptible to textual analysis appropriate to the construction of a statute or the directions provided by a judge when summing a case up to the jury. From time to time there will no doubt be cases when judicial review is granted on the basis of what is or is not contained in the planning officer's report. This reflects no more than the court's conclusion in the particular circumstances of the case before it. In my judgment an application for judicial review based on criticisms on the planning officer's report will not normally begin to merit consideration unless the overall effect of the report significantly misleads the committee about material matters which thereafter are left uncorrected at the meeting of the planning committee before the relevant decision is taken.”
“Its purpose is not to decide the issue, but to inform the members of relevant considerations relating to the application. It is not addressed to the world at large but to council members, who, by virtue of that membership may be expected to have substantial local and background knowledge. There would be no point in a planning officer’s report setting out in great detail background material, for example in respect of local topography, development plan policies or matters of planning history if the members were only too familiar with that material. Part of a planning officer’s expert function in reporting to the committee must be to make an assessment of how much information needs to be included in his or her report in order to avoid burdening a busy committee with excessive and unnecessary detail.”
“It is important that the principal issues and the key information are put to them, but it is not necessary, or indeed desirable, that the report should be exhaustive. Plainly there will always be room for dispute as to whether the report should in certain respects have been fuller, or whether certain guidance should have been expressly referred to, particularly in a development which is as large and significant as this one. But it is not for the court to second guess the officers. …”
“Democratically elected bodies go about their decision-making in a different way from courts. They have professional advisors who investigate and report to them. Those reports obviously have to be clear and full enough to enable them to understand the issues and make up their minds within the limits that the law allows them. But the courts should not impose too demanding a standard upon such reports, for otherwise their whole purpose will be defeated: the councillors either will not read them or will not have a clear enough grasp of the issues to make a decision for themselves. It is their job, and not the court’s, to weigh the competing public and private interests involved.”
“As the gap in service provision (from the end of the M50 at Ross to Michaelwood) is in excess of 50 miles, this proposal constitutes a core MSA. This gap in core provision on the SRN is one of half a dozen nationally which have been recognised by ministers, so this MSA would help fulfil the policy aspirations and need by filling one of these accepted gaps on our network….”
“Within the Cotswolds AONB, priority will be given to the conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty of the landscape over other considerations, whilst also having regard to the economic and social well-being of the AONB. Development within, or affecting the setting of, the AONB will only be permitted if all the following criteria are met: a) The nature, siting and scale are sympathetic to the landscape; b) The design and materials complement the character of the areas; and c) Important landscape features and trees are retained and appropriate landscaping measures are undertaken. Major development will not be permitted unless it is demonstrated to be in the national interest and that there is a lack of alternative sites.”
“The test of acceptability or necessity suffers in my view from the fatal defect that it necessarily involves an investigation by the court of the merits of the planning decision. How is the court to decide whether the effect of a planning obligation is to make a development acceptable without deciding that without that obligation it would have been unacceptable? Whether it would have been unacceptable must be a matter of planning judgment. It is, I suppose, theoretically possible that a Secretary of State or local planning authority may say in terms that he or it thought that a proposed development was perfectly acceptable on its merits but nevertheless thought that it was a good idea to insist that the developer should be required to undertake a planning obligation as the price of obtaining his permission. If that should ever happen, I should think the courts would have no difficulty in saying that it disclosed a state of mind which was Wednesbury unreasonable. But in the absence of such a confession, the application of the acceptability or necessity test must involve the courts in an investigation of the planning merits. The criteria in Circular 16/91 are entirely appropriate to be applied by the Secretary of State as part of his assessment of the planning merits of the application. But they are quite unsuited to application by the courts.”
“Obligations must also be so directly related to proposed developments that the development ought not to be permitted without them – for example, there should be a functional or geographical link between the development and the item being provided as part of the developer’s contribution.”