The High Court has quashed Fingal County Council’s July 2020 refusal to extend planning permission for a retirement care facility and hotel on the former Baldoyle Racecourse lands, and remitted the application to the council for determination in accordance with law.
Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan ruled that, when assessing whether development objectives had significantly changed under section 42 of the Planning and Development Act, the council could have regard to the Baldoyle-Stapolin Local Area Plan (LAP), which remained in force after its extension in 2018. The council had treated itself as confined to the Fingal Development Plan and had not considered the LAP’s continued inclusion of a local objective for a public park and sensitively designed retirement village.
Barford Holdings applied in May 2020 to extend the permission to September 2025. The permission, granted by An Bord Pleanála in April 2015, covered a 150-bedroom retirement facility, a hotel and related works. The council refused the application, saying the removal of Specific Local Objective 469 from the 2017–2023 Development Plan was a significant change and the development would no longer be consistent with the area’s planning objectives.
The company argued that the objective continued in the 2013 LAP, which the council had extended to May 2023. The council disputed that the objective survived the new development plan and argued that section 42 required it to consider the development plan alone.
The judge held that the statutory scheme allowed the council to consider the LAP in deciding whether the change was significant. She said the council’s failure to consider the LAP was an error of law and meant it had failed to address a relevant consideration raised in the extension application. The court did not decide that the permission must be extended: the application is to be reconsidered under the correct legal approach.
The judgment also addressed two mistakes in the refusal record: it referred once to a different planning register number and incorrectly named the earlier development plan. The judge found those errors harmless on their own because the full record made clear which permission and plan the council had considered. They did not justify quashing the decision.
The judge said the applicant’s separate fair-procedures complaint was moot after her findings on legal error and relevant considerations. She proposed to grant certiorari and remit the application, with the parties to be heard on the form of the orders and consequential matters.