The Newbury Principles collectively refer to an urban planning guideline stating that decisions should be made based only on the planning considerations relevant to the current development, even if the consideration of ulterior purposes may lead to a greater public good. In practice, the principles are used as a test to verify the validity of conditions to be imposed by a planning authority.
Specifically, the decision of the House of Lords in Newbury District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment (1981) contains the following three principles when considering the reasonableness of imposing conditions on consents.
In Australia, the Newbury principles are only formally used in the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, and therefore the term is predominantly only invoked for development consents in that state.[1] The Newbury test also remains in general application in the courts of New Zealand.[2]