Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Petitioners: G Steele QC et M O'Carroll; Simpson & Marwick

Respondent: J Mure QC; Morton Fraser LLP

Interested Party: D Armstrong QC; Shepherd & Wedderburn LLP

27 April 2012

[1] The petitioners are a property development and property investment company. They own retail property in Elgin town centre. The respondents are Moray Council, the local planning authority responsible for inter alia town planning in Elgin and elsewhere in Moray. Answers to the petition were lodged also by the British Land Company Plc, as an interested party. They are the owners of Springfield Retail Park, a retail warehouse park located close to Elgin Retail Park, but on the south side of Edgar Road.

[2] In the present petition for judicial review the petitioners seek reduction of three decisions ("the decisions") made at a special meeting of the respondents' Planning and Regulatory Services Committee ("the committee") on 23 August 2011. By those decisions the respondents resolved to approve, subject to certain conditions, three applications to vary conditions of planning permissions previously granted in respect of units 1 and 3 (sub-divided into units 3A and 3B) at Springfield Retail Park. The purpose of the applications was to remove restrictions on the type of goods permitted to be sold from those units and to allow, for the first time, the sale of open Class 1 non‑food goods. The voting at the special meeting of the committee was six votes to five (with one abstention) in favour of granting the applications.

[3] The case came before me for a First Hearing along with the petition for judicial review brought by Robertson Property Limited and others (P1165/2011). At the First Hearing it was accepted on all sides that the present petition raised issues that were identical in all respects to those which arose in the Robertson Property Limited case. Accordingly, no separate lines of argument were advanced in relation to the present petition.

[4] In my Opinion issued today in the Robertson Property case I have explained why I decided to refuse that petition. The same outcome must follow in the present case. Accordingly, I have pronounced an interlocutor refusing the present petition and reserving all questions of expenses.