The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has lost a court battle over his decision to scrap the previous governments regional housing targets in England. The move was recently ruled unlawful by the High Court, says Stuart Andrews, Head of Planning at international law firm Eversheds and he comments on whether it will it be anything other than a pyrrhic victory.

"Housing developer Cala Homes (South) Ltd argued that Mr Pickles was wrongly seeking to revoke Regional Spatial Strategies (RSS) through discretionary powers and Mr Justice Sales agreed, saying that Cala Homess argument was ‘well founded’. The developer argued that primary legislation should have been introduced, giving MPs the opportunity to debate an issue crucial to future planning in the England. Pickles argued that regional strategies were made by regional assemblies, an undemocratic tier of regional government and this undermined directly elected authorities,” said Andrews.

"Junior Communities Minister, Bob Neill, has already said that the judgement ‘changes very little’. This is because the Government is due to introduce the Localism Bill into Parliament on 22 November, which will provide the statutory basis for the scrapping of regional housing targets. However, this misses the point. We believe it will take a great deal of time to bring this legislation onto the statute books and even longer for local authorities to act on its provisions. In the interim, the reintroduction of the Regional Strategies will ensure that their content will guide and direct development under the statutory requirements of s38 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and no amount of Government statements or policy making can unsettle that position. The best the Government can do will be to play down the function of Regional Guidance, but even this approach cannot overcome those circumstances where regional policy identifies a shortfall of housing land supply and a proposed scheme will remedy that position,” he added.

"As was made clear by the legal team acting for Cala Homes this challenge was not about an attack on localism. It was about the way in which Mr Pickles had reached his decision. Although the Coalition Government considered that the regional approach has been one of the fundamental causes of low house-building rates, the fact is that housing targets are needed whether they are driven at a local or regional level. Pickles decision simply removed housing targets and put nothing back in their place, at a time when the need for more housing has never been more acute," Andrews concluded.