Peter Stevens Estates v North Yorkshire Council: HGV traffic order quashed

The High Court has quashed an experimental traffic regulation order (ETRO) restricting heavy goods vehicles on a Knaresborough road, finding that the decision-maker was materially misled by an officer's report and that the council breached the public sector equality duty.

In Peter Stevens Estates Ltd v North Yorkshire Council [2026] EWHC 2921 (Admin), Sheldon J allowed a statutory challenge under paragraph 35 of Schedule 9 to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 brought by the landlord of an industrial estate on Hambleton Grove.

The ETRO would have prohibited goods vehicles over 7.5 tonnes during the morning and afternoon peaks on weekdays, with no exemption for access. The road is the estate's only access and also serves homes and a care home near a primary school. The order was suspended pending the challenge.

The officer's report stated that the afternoon peak for HGV movements fell outside the proposed restriction, and its summary table supported that impression. The council accepted this was wrong: traffic data showed the afternoon HGV peak at one monitoring site fell within the restricted window. Applying Mansell v Tonbridge and Malling BC [2017] EWCA Civ 1314 by analogy, Sheldon J found nothing to suggest the error had been corrected before the decision was made, even if the decision-maker had looked at the raw data in the appendices. The error gave a "false sense of comfort" that businesses would be less affected than they would be.

Alan Evans, for the council, argued the error was immaterial given the low numbers involved, a difference of a single vehicle. The judge accepted that a corrected report would still have shown most HGV movements fell outside the restricted times. However, the balancing exercise under section 122 was evaluative, and the decision-maker might have been concerned that peak afternoon activity fell within the restriction. The decision might have been different, and the ground succeeded.

The second ground, that the council failed to establish what "reasonable access" to the premises would be before carrying out the section 122 balance, was academic. The judge addressed it to assist any fresh decision. He treated Carnwath J's observations in UK Waste Management Ltd v West Lancashire DC [1996] 3 WLUK 280 as binding, having been approved in Trail Riders Fellowship v Hampshire CC [2019] EWCA Civ 1275. However, the report implicitly identified reasonable access as HGV use outside restricted hours and lighter vehicles within them. Unlike in Waste Management, the council had grappled with the issue, and this ground would have failed.

The equality duty ground succeeded. The care home had raised concerns that early food deliveries and refuse and clinical waste collections could be affected, and was unsure whether collections could be moved. The report concluded there were no adverse impacts on any protected characteristic and assumed, without evidence, that deliveries could be rescheduled or made in smaller vehicles. Sheldon J found that conclusion was not reasonable and that failing to make further inquiries breached the Tameside duty inherent in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. Nor were the concerns analysed under section 149.

The council could not rely on the experimental nature of the order. The judge distinguished Sheakh v Lambeth LBC [2022] EWCA Civ 457, where measures were introduced urgently during the pandemic on a provisional equality assessment. Here there was no urgency, and the council had reached a definitive conclusion of no adverse impact.

Nothing in paragraph 35 prevented the claimant from relying on impacts on care home residents. Unable to say the same decision would, or was highly likely to, have been reached without the errors, the court quashed the order.

Piers Riley-Smith (instructed by Backhouse Jones Solicitors) appeared for the claimant. Alan Evans (instructed by Legal & Democratic Services) appeared for the defendant.