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Monday 20 October 2014

High Court case law on cemeteries in the Green Belt

Some useful recent case law  - this year - regarding planning applications for cemeteries on green belt land.

In Timmins v. Gedling Borough Council  the High Court ruled on a case concerning an application for judicial review of the planning permission granted for a crematorium and cemetery in the Green Belt in Gedling.  

The Council's planning committee had been advised that the crematorium was inappropriate development, but that the cemetery, on its own, was not.  Consequently, the Planning Committee's consideration of whether there were "very special circumstances" which justified the development focussed on the need and absence of alternative sites for the crematorium alone.  

Quashing the planning permission, the judge held that paragraphs  89 and 90 of the NPPF provided an exclusive list of the circumstances in which development would be regarded as "not inappropriate", and that (unlike the previous advice in PPG2) these did not include the change of use of land to use as a cemetery.  




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