R (on the application of Segrue Investments Limited) v Swindon Borough Council [2026] EWHC 2080 (Admin)

Segrue v Swindon is an important CIL judgment about liability notices, the existing-building deduction and what happens when evidence is produced after the statutory review and appeal deadlines have expired. The High Court dismissed the challenge and emphasised that the CIL Regulations are a detailed scheme designed to provide certainty for both developers and collecting authorities.

Neutral citation

[2026] EWHC 2080 (Admin)

Court

High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division, Planning Court

Judgment date

25th August 2026

Judge

Sir Peter Lane

Case number

AC-2025-LON-003039

What Segrue v Swindon decided

The case concerned a former HSBC bank in Swindon which was being converted to residential use. Swindon issued two CIL liability notices. The collecting authority did not allow an existing-building deduction because it considered that there was insufficient evidence to show the building had satisfied the required in-use test.

Segrue did not request a regulation 113 review within the required 28 days. It later produced further evidence about the bank’s use, including material concerning ATMs, a safe and a separate CIL appeal involving another former bank.

The developer argued that regulations 65(4) and 65(5) required, or at least allowed, Swindon to revisit the calculation and issue revised liability notices. The High Court rejected the challenge.

The 28-day review deadline is not a technicality

Regulation 113 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010 provides the formal route for asking the collecting authority to review the chargeable amount. The request must normally be made within 28 days of the liability notice.

If the developer remains dissatisfied after review, regulation 114 provides an appeal route, subject to its own time limit. Sir Peter Lane stressed that these provisions form part of a carefully constructed statutory scheme.

The court rejected an interpretation that would allow those deadlines to be bypassed simply by submitting further evidence later and asking for a fresh decision under regulation 65.

Regulation 65(4) does not reopen the calculation whenever new evidence appears

Regulation 65(4) requires a revised liability notice where the chargeable amount or specified particulars change. Segrue argued that new evidence showing the original CIL calculation to be wrong amounted to such a change.

The court disagreed. If every piece of later evidence had to be reconsidered under regulation 65(4), the specific review and appeal procedures in regulations 113 and 114 would lose much of their purpose.

A change following a statutory review, appeal, relief or exemption is different from a developer seeking to reopen the original factual assessment after the challenge period has expired.

Regulation 65(5) still gives the council a discretion

Regulation 65(5) says that a collecting authority may issue a revised liability notice at any time. The court did not treat that power as meaningless.

It may, for example, allow an authority to respond to overtly cogent late evidence which was genuinely unavailable during the statutory review period and could not reasonably have been obtained earlier.

But regulation 65(5) is not a general second appeal route. Its scope has to be understood alongside the formal review and appeal scheme.

The evidence in Segrue could have been raised earlier

The court found that the question whether the bank remained in use during the relevant period had been live from the outset. Swindon had repeatedly explained the evidence it required and the statutory deadline for a review.

The later information about the ATM, safe and activity during the Covid closure was not shown to be evidence that could not reasonably have been assembled in time for the formal review and appeal process.

For that reason, the developer had had a suitable alternative remedy and had failed to use it.

Repeated correspondence did not restart the judicial review clock

Segrue also tried to challenge a later council email after a long chain of requests for reconsideration. The court held that the relevant decision had been made much earlier and that the judicial review was out of time.

As a general public-law point, writing again to a decision-maker and asking it to reconsider does not normally create a fresh challenge period. There has to be a genuinely new decision rather than a restatement of the existing position.

The case does not decide whether the bank was actually in use

This distinction matters. The High Court did not finally decide that the bank could never have qualified as an in-use building for CIL purposes.

The judgment is principally about the statutory procedure, the effect of the missed deadlines and the limited role of later evidence under regulation 65. A developer with strong in-use evidence should submit it at the earliest opportunity and use the regulation 113 and 114 routes within time.

Read the full Segrue judgment

The approved Planning Court 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 CIL existing-building deduction and six-in-36 rule and the CIL Liability Notice and Demand Notice. Planning Geek also covered the judgment in Segrue v Swindon: missed CIL review deadline.

Segrue Case Law Page Updated: 9th September 2026