| NATURAL JUSTICE — Bias — Apparent bias — Local councillors involved in freemasonry — Full council approving planning application believed to benefit local masonic lodge — Whether apparent bias in decision-making process
R (Port Regis School Ltd) v North Dorset District Council [2006] EWHC 742 (Admin)
QBD: Newman J: 5 April 2006
A decision taken in public life by a freemason in which another freemason or branch of freemasonry had an interest, did not automatically give rise to apparent bias in the decision-making process.
Newman J so held when dismissing an application by the claimant, Port Regis School Ltd, for judicial review of the decision of the defendant, North Dorset District Council, to approve an application for planning permission by the interested party, the Trustees of the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Agricultural Society, to use agricultural land as a show ground and to erect a pavilion.
The claimant challenged the decision on the ground that two council members who attended and voted at the full council meeting were freemasons and the decision was unlawful because of apparent bias since the interested party had held talks with the Masonic Lodge in Gillingham (Kings Court Lodge) about providing a dedicated room in the pavilion for the lodge’s use in return for which the lodge would provide funding. The planning application amounted to a departure from the local plan and the planning officer’s advice to the full council meeting had been firmly to refuse planning permission. Both councillors involved in the full council decision had declared that they were freemasons for the years 2002 and 2003 in accordance with the council’s code of conduct, adopted 12 April 2002. They did not, however, declare an interest as freemasons in respect of the disputed planning application since neither of them were members of the Kings Court Lodge.
NEWMAN J said that the appropriate test for determining an issue of apparent bias was whether a fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the relevant facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased. Freemasonry had not, by its own tenets, made it easy for a fair-minded observer to become informed about its practices due to some of the secrecy surrounding them. Furthermore the public firmly held a suspicion that being a member required partiality to be shown to freemasons and to freemasonry, thus the perception that freemasonry would give rise to apparent bias in decision-making would prevail. It was likely that a large section of fair-minded people would agree with the claimant and subscribe to a belief that there was always a real possibility that a freemason would assist another freemason or freemasonry, whatever might be called for by the merits of a decision which had to be taken in connection with local government, however a fair-minded observer, informed of the facts in connection with freemasonry and having regard to the circumstances of the particular case before the court, would not conclude that there was a real possibility of apparent bias affecting the decision of the full council to grant planning permission.
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