R (on the application of Greenfields (IOW) Limited) v Isle of Wight Council and Westridge Village Limited [2025] EWCA Civ 488
Greenfields is the leading Court of Appeal authority on the requirement to publish proposed or agreed planning obligations on the planning register before a planning application is finally disposed of. The Court held that Isle of Wight Council’s failure to publish the section 106 agreement before issuing permission was unlawful on the facts of the case because the omission deprived objectors of the opportunity to comment on a material highways contribution.
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- Neutral citation
- [2025] EWCA Civ 488
- Court
- Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
- Judgment date
- 16th April 2025
- Judge
- Lord Justice Singh and Lord Justice Lewis
- Case number
- CA-2024-002003
What Greenfields decided
The case concerned permission for a large residential development at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The planning committee resolved to approve the scheme subject to a section 106 agreement. One important part of that agreement was the developer’s financial contribution towards highway improvements at two junctions affected by the development.
Officers negotiated the agreement after the committee resolution. Neither the proposed agreement nor the final agreement was placed on the public planning register before permission was issued on 4th August 2023.
The Court of Appeal held that the council had breached article 40(3)(b) of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 and that, in the circumstances of this case, the breach rendered the grant of planning permission unlawful.
What article 40(3)(b) requires
Article 40 requires the local planning register authority to keep a register of planning applications. While an application has not been finally disposed of, Part 1 of that register must include a copy of any planning obligation or section 278 agreement proposed or entered into in connection with the application.
In practical terms, a draft or sufficiently developed proposed section 106 obligation cannot simply remain private between the developer and council until the same moment that planning permission is issued.
Our wider guide explains what councils must place on the planning register.
The purpose is transparency and the opportunity to comment
Lord Justice Lewis said the statutory purpose is to enable members of the public to know the terms of a proposed or agreed planning obligation and, if they wish, to comment on the subject matter of that obligation before the application is finally disposed of.
The duty is not itself a general statutory consultation exercise. It does not create a fresh opportunity to reopen every wider planning objection after the committee has resolved to grant permission.
The focus is the planning obligation itself. If the agreement contains a financial contribution, mitigation measure or other obligation that matters to the planning decision, the public should be able to see what is actually proposed and comment on it.
Publishing only the heads of terms was not enough
The officer report had stated that a financial contribution towards highway works would be required. The council argued that this meant there had been substantial compliance with the publication duty.
The Court of Appeal rejected that argument. The heads of terms did not say how much the developer would actually pay.
The final section 106 contribution was £406,359. Earlier material had referred to a developer estimate of highway works in the region of £777,000, while other figures in the evidence were higher again. The amount of the contribution was therefore a matter on which an interested objector might obviously wish to comment.
A breach does not automatically invalidate every planning permission
This is one of the most important limits on Greenfields. The Court of Appeal expressly rejected a rule that every breach of article 40(3) automatically makes the eventual planning permission invalid.
The consequences depend on the facts. In one case the substance of the agreement may already be in the public domain. In another, the unpublished obligation may contain a material term that nobody outside the negotiations could know.
The court therefore asks what purpose the statutory requirement serves and what practical consequence the non-compliance had in the particular case.
There was real prejudice in Greenfields
Greenfields and local residents were closely following the application and checking the council’s website for the section 106 agreement. The evidence showed a strong interest in the cost of the highway works and how the contribution would be calculated.
Because the amount was not published before permission was issued, Greenfields lost the opportunity to comment on the apparent difference between the contribution and the previously discussed cost of the works.
That was not a merely technical defect. It went directly to the statutory purpose of publishing the agreement.
The highly likely test did not save the permission
The council argued that permission would have been granted anyway and that the court should therefore withhold a remedy under section 31 of the Senior Courts Act 1981.
The Court of Appeal refused to do so. The evidence contained several different figures for the highway works, and it was not the court’s role to reconstruct what financial contribution the council would have selected if the public had commented on the draft agreement.
The court could not be satisfied that it was highly likely the outcome would not have been substantially different.
The committee resolution itself was not automatically destroyed
The Court of Appeal provisionally concluded that the unlawful act was the later decision issuing planning permission without first complying with article 40(3)(b). The validity of the committee’s April 2023 resolution to approve the application was not itself affected by that publication failure.
That distinction matters where a council is considering what it must do after a successful challenge. Greenfields does not necessarily mean the whole application process must start again from the beginning.
Greenfields was applied in Chidswell
Later in 2025, the High Court applied Greenfields in R (Chidswell Action Group) v Kirklees Council. There too a draft section 106 agreement had not been published before the permission was issued. On the facts of that case, the omission prevented meaningful public scrutiny of biodiversity safeguards and again led to the permission being quashed.
Reading the two cases together is useful because Chidswell shows how the Greenfields principle works outside a financial-contribution dispute.
Read the full Greenfields judgment
The approved Court of Appeal judgment is held in the Planning Geek case law library. Gold Members can open the protected PDF below.
Related Planning Geek guidance
See our guides to the Section 106 Agreement and the planning register.
Greenfields Case Law Page Updated: 9th September 2026