Judicial review or a statutory challenge to a decision

If a council grants planning permission you think is unlawful, the route is judicial review. If an inspector or the Secretary of State issues a decision you think is unlawful, the route is a statutory challenge under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Both run to a six week limit and both are about legality rather than merits.

Choosing the wrong one wastes the only window you have, because six weeks is not long enough to file, be told you are in the wrong court, and start again.

Two procedures, two targets

Judicial review is the general supervisory jurisdiction of the High Court over public bodies. In planning it is used against decisions of local planning authorities: a grant of permission, a refusal to take enforcement action, a decision that prior approval is not required, the adoption of a policy document outside the statutory scheme.

A statutory challenge under section 288 is a specific right created by the 1990 Act to challenge decisions of the Secretary of State and of inspectors acting on their behalf. Appeal decisions, called-in applications and recovered appeals all go this way. A parallel provision, section 113 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, deals with challenges to development plan documents after adoption.

The practical rule is simple. Ask who made the decision. Council, judicial review. Inspectorate or minister, section 288. Local plan, section 113.

Both are heard in the Planning Court, a specialist list within the Administrative Court, and both require the court's permission to proceed to a full hearing.

The six week limit

For planning decisions, a judicial review claim form must be filed within six weeks of the grounds arising, which for a grant of permission means the date the decision was issued. A section 288 application has its own six week limit running from the date of the decision.

Six weeks is not extendable in the way ordinary limitation periods sometimes are. Courts have been consistently unwilling to relieve claimants who miss it, and the practical effect is that the decision to challenge has to be made in the first fortnight.

That timetable also has to absorb the pre-action protocol, which expects a letter before claim setting out the grounds and giving the other side a chance to respond. Sending it late is better than not sending it, but it does not stop the clock.

Get the decision notice and the officer's report the day they are published. For a prior approval decision the same clock applies, and our note on the difference between prior approval and planning permission explains why the officer's scope of consideration is narrower in those cases.

Grounds, and what they are not

Neither procedure is an appeal on the merits. The court does not ask whether the decision was a good one. It asks whether it was lawful.

Grounds that work are legal: a misinterpretation of a policy or a statutory provision, a failure to take into account a material consideration, taking into account something immaterial, a conclusion no reasonable authority could have reached on the evidence, a failure to give adequate reasons where reasons are required, procedural unfairness, bias, or a failure to follow a mandatory procedural step such as a required consultation or an environmental assessment.

Grounds that do not work, however strongly felt: the development is too big, the committee ignored 200 objections, the officer was wrong about the traffic, the site should have been protected. Those are planning judgements, and planning judgements are for the decision maker.

The most successful challenges are narrow and technical. A misreading of a policy's wording. An environmental impact screening opinion that failed to consider cumulative effects. A habitats assessment that took account of mitigation it should not have. Weight, by contrast, is almost always a matter for the authority.

Standing and who can bring a claim

Judicial review requires sufficient interest in the matter. In planning that is interpreted generously: neighbours, local amenity societies, parish councils and national campaign bodies have all been accepted. A claimant with no connection to the area at all may be challenged on standing, but it is rarely the point that decides a planning case.

Section 288 uses a different phrase, person aggrieved, which has also been read broadly and covers those who took part in the process and those affected by the decision.

Practically, standing is less of an obstacle than funding and the timetable.

Costs and the risk

This is the part that stops most people, and it should be understood before a solicitor is instructed. The general rule in civil litigation is that the loser pays the winner's costs, and a planning challenge involves a public authority and usually an interested party developer, both of whom will have counsel.

Claims that qualify as environmental within the meaning of the Aarhus Convention benefit from a costs capping regime in the Civil Procedure Rules, which limits what an unsuccessful claimant pays and what they can recover. The caps are set in the rules and have been revised, so take the current figures from the rules themselves rather than from older commentary, and take advice on whether your claim qualifies.

Crowdfunding is now common for community challenges. If you go that route, be straight with contributors about the odds and about what happens to the money if permission to proceed is refused.

Remedies and what quashing achieves

The usual remedy is a quashing order. The decision is set aside and the matter goes back to the decision maker to be taken again, lawfully.

That is the limit of what a successful challenge achieves. It does not mean permission is refused. It means the authority must decide again, properly, and it may reach the same conclusion by a lawful route. For a community group hoping a court will stop a scheme, this is the point to understand before spending money.

Relief is also discretionary, and the court must refuse it where it appears highly likely that the outcome would not have been substantially different had the error not occurred. A technical breach with no practical consequence is unlikely to get a quashing order.

Development can lawfully proceed while a challenge is pending unless an injunction is obtained, and injunctions carry their own cost undertakings.

What to try before litigating

Litigation is the last option, and several earlier ones get overlooked.

Before a decision is made, a request to the Secretary of State to call the application in is available, and a holding direction can be issued that prevents the council from issuing the permission while the request is considered. Requests are rarely granted, but the cost is a letter.

Where the complaint is about how the council behaved rather than about the legality of the outcome, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman can investigate maladministration. The Ombudsman cannot quash a permission, so the remedy is limited, but a finding carries weight.

Where the issue is that development has taken place without permission or outside its terms, the answer is enforcement rather than a challenge to a decision, and the lawfulness of what has been built is a separate question covered in our comparison of lawful development certificates and planning permission.

And where the concern is about how a policy is being applied across an area, engaging with the local plan process achieves more than any single case. The planning law timeline is a reasonable place to follow reforms that affect these procedures.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Both procedures involve strict time limits and real costs risk, and anyone considering a challenge should take advice from a solicitor or barrister with planning litigation experience without delay. Full application documents, including the supporting reports that informed the decision, are usually available on the council's public register and are the first thing to obtain.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope if you are preparing your own application rather than challenging someone else's. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval.