The Planning Inspectorate has halted Sainsbury’s plans to expand a supermarket in Sheffield after dismissing the firm’s air quality impact assessment. It is the first major retail development to be refused for this reason.
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Concerns that the development would have a greater impact on air quality than the firm predicted also threaten Tesco’s plans to extend one of its nearby stores.
Sainsbury’s Supermarket Ltd applied for a 44% increase in floor area of its Millhouses site, on the south-western outskirts of the city, in 2009. After Sheffield City Council refused planning permission last year, the company lodged an appeal.
Planning inspector Ian Jenkins’ decision to dismiss the appeal was published on 3 August. The main issues he identified were “the effect of the proposal on local air quality and the safety and convenience of highway users, and whether any harm associated with these matters would be outweighed by other considerations”.
Both the council and Sainsbury’s agreed that the proposed development would be expected to increase the number of customers and vehicle trips to the site.
The site is within an air quality management area (AQMA) for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), as local concentrations of the gas breach EU limits. Greater traffic could compound the problem.
Mr Jenkins’ decision references the government’s planning policy statement 23, which concerns pollution control. This states that development that would worsen air quality inside an AQMA may be permitted, but only if its effects have an overall benefit to the environment.
Similarly, a part of Sheffield’s unitary development plan confirms that new development may only proceed if, among other conditions, it will not cause unacceptable conditions for residents and visitors. This includes the issue of air quality. Another council policy requires a development to be sited to minimise the effect of any pollution incurred.
In its appeal submission, Sainsbury’s provided a revised air quality assessment (AQA) based on monitoring at five properties near the supermarket, which was conducted between June and December 2010.
When seasonally adjusted, the residences were all found to be above the legal annual average limit for NO2 of 40 micrograms per cubic metre. Sainsbury’s used the monitoring data to predict the development’s impact in 2013, when the extension was expected to open. This was performed using the ‘emission factor toolkit’ published by the Department for Transport (DfT) last year.
The significance of the extra pollution produced was then assessed using non-statutory guidance on planning and air quality produced by charity Environmental Protection UK (EPUK) (ENDS Report, May 2010). This indicated that, without mitigation, there would be a minor adverse impact.
The guidance states that this would be unlikely to justify refusal. A proposal to install improved signalling at a junction would deliver a minor beneficial effect overall.
These conclusions would normally be persuasive evidence to overturn the council’s decision. But “a number of matters [indicate] that the findings of the appeal AQA cannot be relied upon,” Mr Jenkins concluded.
His main concern was that the DfT model assumed NO2 from traffic is declining quickly. But this is not the case, as vehicular emissions are not as well controlled as had previously been thought (ENDS Report, March 2011); the environment department (DEFRA) admitted the problem last year.
Since Sainsbury’s did not make allowances for this flaw, the inspector concluded that the assessment was unreliable – a decision likely to set a precedent.
EPUK chief executive James Grugeon said: “This judgment sees understanding of the failure of the Euro vehicle emission standards to control NOx emissions move from the research stage to practical policy application.
“Applicants should not simply assume that NO2 concentrations will fall over coming years as previously predicated, and should instead consider a range of emission scenarios when examining the impacts of a new development,” he said.
A further problem with the AQA was that the baseline figures taken from the monitoring results turned out to be overestimates. Data from the full year, rather than seven months, prove that two monitored properties had NO2 concentrations below the annual average limit.
“Under these circumstances, the likelihood that an increase in NO2 levels resulting from the proposal would cause a breach of the [limit] would be significantly greater than the appeal AQA suggests,” said the decision paper.
Mr Jenkins judged that the development would attract more traffic than was assumed and that there was “no empirical evidence” that a proposed junction signalling upgrade would cut local emissions by the predicted 3%.
He criticised Sheffield City Council for not requiring the AQA to consider cumulative impacts. The council has not yet determined the outcome of Tesco’s application for a similar extension to its store in Millhouses, or plans for a retirement village nearby.
“I cannot be confident that the appeal scheme would not cause unacceptable harm to local air quality, or conflict with [council] policies,” Mr Jenkins concluded.
Although the development’s landscaping, energy efficiency, noise impact and flood risk were found to be acceptable, the plan as a whole did not accord with planning policy statement 4 – Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth. Mr Jenkins said it would not amount to sustainable economic development, due to uncertainty over its impact to air quality and public health.
Sainsbury’s has refused to comment.
Reproduced with permission of the ENDS Report, www.endsreport.com, the UK journal for environment policy and business
Further Information
The Planning Inspectorate Decision pdf can be found here.
