By Clara Finn
The High Court has dismissed a Wicklow farmer's challenge to the removal of about 1.2 hectares of his land from the Kilpedder-Willowgrove village development boundary.
John Fox owns Sunnybank Farm at The Downs. He said he intended the land, beside the Downhill Woods housing estate, to accommodate three houses for his children. Inclusion within the village boundary would appreciably improve the prospects of securing residential planning permission.
Wicklow County Council's draft county development plan left the land outside the boundary. Its chief executive also recommended against extending it, citing the village's limited services and the amount of land already available for development.
However, elected councillors voted in March 2022 to amend the draft and include Fox's land. They retained that amendment when adopting the Wicklow County Development Plan 2022-2028 in September 2022.
The Office of the Planning Regulator opposed the change. It said the site was peripheral, greenfield land and that extending the settlement there conflicted with policies favouring compact, sequential development and sustainable transport. The Minister subsequently issued a direction in February 2023 restoring the boundary shown in the original draft plan, leaving Fox's land outside it.
Fox challenged that direction, principally arguing that the Minister had failed to state adequate reasons specific to his property.
Mr Justice David Holland rejected that argument. He held that public-law reasons do not all have to appear in the final decision itself. They can be found in documents clearly adopted as part of the decision-making process, provided they are reasonably ascertainable.
The judge found that relevant OPR recommendations had been published and expressly linked to the Minister's decision. Those documents specifically addressed Fox's land, citing its peripheral location, limited public transport, sufficient existing development capacity in the village and inconsistency with compact-growth policy.
The court also rejected complaints that insufficient weight had been given to Fox's planning submission, holding that such arguments amounted to disagreement with planning merits rather than legal error. The proceedings were dismissed.