Enforcement notice – Plaintiffs widening footpath to provide access from highway to parking area for which planning permission not required – Whether construction of means of access to one highway over another covered by class B permitted development rights
The respondents owned Bridlepath Cottage, off Loudwater Lane, Chorleywood, Hertfordshire. The property was some distance from and above Loudwater Lane, which was an unclassified vehicular highway. There was no means of vehicular approach to the cottage. Public footpath 10, the path, ran past the respondents’ land, past another house and garden and finally joined up with the lane. In order to create vehicular access to their land, the respondents carried out works to widen part of the path. On April 4 1995 the local planning authority issued an enforcement notice alleging breach of planning control and complaining, inter alia, that the works constituted a danger and inconvenience to vehicular traffic and pedestrians using the path. The respondents appealed contending that they were not in breach of planning control because the two elements of the works, namely the provision of hardstanding on their land for parking and the formation of the accessway, were covered by permitted development rights under Schedule 2 Part 2 class B to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The inspector accepted that the construction of the hardstanding was permitted development under Part I class F and that the works on the respondents’ land to construct a driveway was also permitted development, but only as far as the boundary with the path. He rejected the argument that permitted development rights could be exercised without the need for any consent over a public footpath. The judge allowed the respondents’ appeal and the Secretary of State appealed, contending that class B did not cover the construction of means of access to one highway over another.
Held The appeal was allowed.
The effect of the works carried out by the respondents was to make access along a pedestrian path more commodious for vehicles. Such works involved a significant change of status which could not have been envisaged by the Secretary of State, when making the regulations under the 1990 Act, as being permissible without the necessity for any application. Permitted development under Part 2 class B did not apply to the construction of a means of access to a person’s premises where such works of construction were executed within a public footpath. Nor were the words “construction of a means of access” to be extended to authorise the construction of a means of access over one highway to another means of access which was itself a highway.
Timothy Corner (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; Morag Ellis (instructed by Titmuss Sainer Dechert) appeared for the respondents; the local authority did not appear and were not represented.
