The Delimitation of Powers of SCOTs in Regulating Economic Activities

Extract

[...] Implemented pursuant to the Solidarity and Urban Renewal Act of 13 December 2000, known as the 'SRU Act', the PLUs are intended to replace the former land use plans (or POS). As for the territorial coherence plans (SCOT), they are tools for designing and implementing inter-municipal planning, guiding in particular the long-term development of a territory within the framework of a Sustainable Development and Planning Project (PADD). Although the judgment under consideration concerns master plans, the solution adopted by the Council of State applies in all respects to the SCOTs, which replaced the master plans from 2001 onwards pursuant to the SRU Act. [...]

[...] This Master Plan provided for the prohibition, in areas classified as 'protected natural spaces', of the transformation of camping and caravaning grounds into residential leisure parks. It also set a limiting objective for the number of new mobile homes on these grounds. In reaction, the 'Fédération départementale de l'hôtellerie de plein air de la Charente-Maritime' therefore brought an action before the Administrative Court of Poitiers, asking it to annul the prefectural decree on the grounds that the executable Master Plan would harm the good development of this sector of activity. The Administrative Court having rejected the Fédération départementale's request, the latter appealed this decision. [...]

[...] 122-1 of the Urban Planning Code. Master plans enable the determination of a sustainable and ecological approach to territorial development and the setting of conditions for the use of land and space. Based on a territorial diagnosis, local actors and authors of the master plan must thus produce a territorial development project taking into account ecological interests. Article L. 122-1 of the Urban Planning Code, in its former version, stipulated that master plans 'set the fundamental orientations of the development of the territories concerned, taking into account of the balance that must be preserved between urban expansion, the exercise of agricultural activities, other economic activities, and the preservation of air quality, natural or urban environments, sites and landscapes. [...]

[...] In this ruling, the Council of State recognizes both significant power to the authors of master plans - or SCOT in terms of prescription without calling into question higher provisions or the power of autonomy of municipalities and their POS - or PLU. It is interesting to note that the law has evolved since this ruling. In fact, the SRU law and the law of July known as Grenelle II, have revised the relationships between the different urban planning documents. [...]

[...] The question of law at issue here is that of knowing to what extent a master plan can harm the development of an economic activity in the name of the respect of objectives, notably ecological, assigned by the law? To this question, the Council of State responds by establishing the principle that 'the authors of a master plan can legally rely on the importance of certain activities on the territory covered by the plan to provide specific prescriptions that are intended to guide their development and ensure their consistency with the respect of other objectives assigned by the law, provided that these prescriptions are not in contradiction with the application of other regulations or administrative procedures and do not interfere, by their precision, with those that fall within local urban planning documents and, in particular, local urban plans'. [...]