1. ) Lok Swee Yoon 2. ) Kimwali Realty Sdn Bhd 3. ) Azizan Bin Abd Rahman 4. ) Che Mahani Binti Hassan 5. ) Turfgrass Sdn Bhd 6. ) Yeoh Chee Hun 7. ) Yee Jeng Ee 8. ) Wong Kuan Thye 9. ) Maria Chin Binti Abdullah 10. ) Tan Hock Seng 11. ) Kwan Swee Cheong 12. ) Foo Ah Foung 13. ) Toh Peng 14. ) Chong Chew Cheok 15. ) Low Kui Kin 16. ) Lee Bee Ling 17. ) Kong Chan Wah 18. ) Tan Kheng Loon (on behalf of Chin Soh Mui, deceased) 19. ) Tan Chun Hong 20. ) Su Kewi @ Yau Sai Sun (deceased) 21. ) Yau...

Case Significance

Illustrates the limited standing of neighbouring purchasers to challenge a grant of planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976, and confirms that such a decision will be quashed only on the established grounds of illegality, irrationality, procedural impropriety or disproportionality.

This High Court decision concerns an application for judicial review to quash a planning permission granted by a local authority for a mixed development, brought by a group of landowners who had purchased plots in the area. The applicants challenged the decision of the local authority, the planning authority for the district, to grant planning permission and an endorsed layout plan to a developer for a phased mixed development over parcels of land, together with a surrender and re-alienation under section 204B of the National Land Code. They sought to have the impugned decision quashed, or alternatively to require the developer to apply to amend the planning permission and layout plan so as to acknowledge and make provision for an existing earlier-approved phase of a related project, and to require the local authority to notify them of any such application. The court examined the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 and the framework governing applications for planning permission, and considered whether the applicants, as purchasers of plots, were persons aggrieved by the impugned decision such that judicial review should be granted. It observed that, under the statutory scheme, the persons involved in an application for planning permission are essentially the local authority and the applicant for that permission. Applying the established grounds of judicial review, the court found no illegality, irrationality, procedural impropriety or disproportionality in the grant of the planning permission that would justify intervention. It concluded that it was not satisfied that the application ought to be allowed and dismissed the application for judicial review, making no order as to costs. The court also noted that the relief sought would in effect require the local authority to reopen and re-shape a permission already granted to a third party, which fell outside the proper scope of judicial review absent any recognised public-law error in the original decision. The judgment is a useful illustration of the limited standing of neighbouring purchasers to challenge a grant of planning permission, and of the grounds on which a planning decision may be judicially reviewed.