No order as to costs in complex planning and development proceedings

Judicial review – planning and development – costs of legal proceedings - costs of an unsuccessful judicial review leave application aimed at challenging the grant of development consent - seventh judgment or determination on this matter and the fifth at High Court level - costs follow the event – principle can be modified - Veolia Water approach - proceedings are manifestly sufficiently complex so as to engage the Veolia Water approach - sub-issues - points on which they won occupied a broadly similar amount of time to those on which the applicants lost – balance of costs – statutory interpretation - ontrary to EU law but that does not mean they must be treated as invalid - how much of the challenge relates to public participation, national environmental law in fields covered by EU Law, or art. 9 of the Aarhus Convention – reference to Europe - section imposes a default rule of no order as to costs for proceedings to which it applies - EU law principle that costs should not be prohibitively expensive as it applies to national environmental law - effect of the not-prohibitively-expensive rule - constitutional principle that proceedings should not be prohibitively expensive - no order to costs most appropriate – no order as to costs in relation to the leave application and the injunction, up to and including the judgment refusing leave.