Friends of Hethel Ltd, R (on the application of) v South Norfolk. País/Territorio Reino Unido Tipo de la corte Nacional - corte superior Fecha Jul 30, 2010 Fuente UNEP, InforMEA Nombre del tribunal Court of Appeal Sede de la corte London Juez SedleyLloydSullivan. Número de referencia [2010] EWCA Civ 894 Idioma Inglés Materia Energía, Tierra y suelos Palabra clave Conservación de energía/producción de energía Manejo de tierras Energía renovable Resumen Ecotricity Group Ltd is a green electricity company which has built wind turbines and sold electricity across Britain since 1995. It was the successful applicant for a planning permission. The proposed location of the wind turbines is at the site of Lotus Cars Limited in Hethel, Norfolk. The judicial review proceedings seeked to overturn the planning permission granted for the erection of three wind turbines in Norfolk. The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant company's application for judicial review, finding that there could be no criticism of the planning committee's decision of 23 July 2008 to grant planning permission even though a previous local area planning committee had assessed the application differently. The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court and quashed the grant of planning permission for three wind turbines at the Lotus car factory in Hethel on two grounds. (i) The Council's constitution was held to be unlawful in requiring a two-thirds majority before area planning committees could determine planning applications against officer advice. The application should not therefore have been referred to the district-wide committee which approved it. The Court ruled that voting in Council committees must be by simple majority. the requirement for the area sub-committee to pass the resolution to grant planning permission by a two-thirds majority was in breach of Schedule 12 of the Local Government Act 1972. He acknowledged that the procedure was intended to reflect the Councils scheme of delegation, but the method adopted fell foul of the rules in Sch. 12. A method could have been devised to allow the sub-committees views to be reflected in a decision delegated to the Chief Planning Officer, but the unlawful requirement for a two-thirds majority prevented a valid reference of their decision to the main committee. As a result of this, the main committee had no authority themselves to determine the application. (ii) Environmental Statement with the application had identified impacts on 13 Grade I and II* listed buildings and on other Grade II listed buildings. The Court of Appeal considered that these impacts were impacts on setting. It also held that the Council appeared to have endorsed the Environmental Statement, but in any event, the Council's officers had identified an impact on a Grade I church. The Council should therefore have consulted English Heritage on the effect of the proposal (involving a highly visible wind farm) on the setting of more than 200 listed buildings. The extent to which the proposal for the wind farm might affect the setting of the listed buildings was one on which English Heritage should have been given the opportunity to comment. Texto completo COU-156648.pdf