Megan Thomas KC and Noemi Byrd Triumphs in High Court Case for Canterbury City Council

Megan has won this High Court case along with her junior Noemi Byrd, for Canterbury City Council. It was a challenge to permission for a slip road off the A2 into the City Centre, which was to develop over a large section of Park and Ride parking spaces at Wincheap.

The argument centred on to what extent the Council should have taken into account how the Park and Ride could be re-provisioned and expanded given that no such redevelopment scheme had yet been worked up. In short, the Judge found that you cannot take into account what is not known and you need not come up with potential baseline schemes and assess their impacts.

A second point related to the Screening Opinion pursuant to the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulation and whether it overlooked the potential impacts of a scenario where the Park and Ride was not expanded. This point was also dismissed. It was also argued by the Council that in that scenario the Highway Authority would not enter into a Section 278 Agreement anyway and so the slip road development could be controlled.