Is Twice the Size Materially Bigger?

One of the bugbears of planning law is that it often contains terms that are not clearly defined and this imprecision provides copious room for argument. Recently, a case came to court to consider the meaning of the term 'materially larger' in the context of a planning application.

The case arose when a local authority granted planning permission to demolish an existing house and replace it with one which had a building footprint two and a half times that of the house being demolished and represented a four-fold increase in volumetric terms. It was argued that the increase was not material because the design of the new house involved the creation of some floor space which was below ground level.

The planners had concluded that the new property would not be 'materially larger' than the previous premises.

In the view of the Court of Appeal, whilst in certain circumstances a small increase in floor space could be considered to be material, it was harder to see how it could be asserted that such a large increase in floor space was not. The correct test was 'was the new property materially larger?' and not 'did it make a material impact?'. The intention of the relevant planning law was to ensure that the proposed new building was similar in scale to the existing one. The local authority had misinterpreted the policy.

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