Overriding Public Interest

When asked what constituted overriding public interest, a senior civil servant replied “overriding public interest is what the government says overriding public interest is”. This response had the virtue of honesty, and is almost a restatement of the Whitehall Loop . It could easily be paraphrased to say that the government will make up the rules as it goes along. In fact this freedom is probably necessary in order to deal with the inconsistencies in the legislation, especially the clash between the government policy of Sustainable Development and the prescriptive environmental legislation. In the case of Dibden, it might be thought that the RSPB report on the need for port capacity had established that some new capacity was in the overriding public interest, though not specifically at Dibden Bay. RSPB’s principal objection to the project was that ABP, by seeking to argue that with the compensation proposed the impact of the project was not “significant”, had sought to avoid the tests of overriding public interest and alternatives.