Enforcement notices — Land used by travelling showmen — Alleged breach of planning control — Whether one enforcement notice can be issued in respect of land divided into small plots for occupation by caravans valid — Appeal by occupiers dismissed
The appellants in these two appeals are travelling showmen and their families who have placed their caravans, fairground rides and equipment, machinery and vehicles upon former agricultural land in the green belt in Surrey. In each case four enforcement notices were issued under section 87 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 by the local planning authority alleging a breach of planning control by the development of the site without planning permission. On appeal from the decision of Sir Graham Eyre QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Queen’s Bench Division, the appellants contended that an enforcement notice issued in respect of a piece of land which is divided into small plots for occupation by caravans is not valid and that section 87 of the 1971 Act requires a separate notice to be issued in respect of each plot of land. For example, in the first appeal there was a 17-acre site partially divided into separate plots registered at the Land Registry and with a common access road and other areas, and the notice required the removal of all the caravans and equipment and the return of the land to agriculture.
Held The appeals were dismissed.
In the court below the deputy judge considered the appropriateness of taking a large unit when there were individual plots in separate ownerships, and concluded that a planning authority took a larger site at its peril and that it would generally be easier to establish a material change of use on a smaller site. He was entitled to accept the views of the inspectors in these two cases that each site had undergone a fundamental change as a result of the change of use.
A local planning authority was entitled to issue an enforcement notice in respect of a site consisting of several owners and occupiers and section 87 of the 1971 Act did not require that an enforcement notice was required to be issued in respect of each planning unit. Although such a practice was usual, the present cases involve facts which have unusual if not exceptional features and characteristics in common which justify the less usual procedure adopted, but which do not appear to have arisen before and are therefore unlikely to arise frequently.
Johnson v Secretary of State for the Environment
(1974) 28 P & CR 424.
Barry Payton and Adrian Jack (instructed by Clinton Davis Cushing & Kelly) appeared for the appellants; and Duncan Ouseley (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the respondent in each case.
