Planning decisions: beware judicial review changes

Property lawyers probably didn’t pay very much attention to the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 during its passage through the Parliament. However one of the reforms could have a considerable impact on our developer clients – the changes to the judicial review process, that will apply to planning permissions.

The most significant aspect of the change is the introduction of a time limit for bringing a judicial review challenge. A challenge must now be brought within three months from the date on which the grounds for bringing the action arose, compared to the open-ended timescale that applied previously.

A new preliminary "permission" stage of the process is also introduced, before the application itself will be considered. The court will decide whether to let the application proceed to full consideration, but that will only happen if the applicant has a "sufficient interest" in the subject matter of the planning permission, and the application for judicial review must itself have a "real prospect of success".