Enforcement notice – Parking cars on land in connection with Gatwick Airport – Existing uses certificate for commercial storage – Planning authority seeking injunction to prevent parking of cars on land – Whether parking constituting storage – Judge holding parking was storage – Court of Appeal allowing appeal
S occupied land owned by the defendants at Southways, London Road, Crawley, and used the site to park the cars of business and holiday passengers using Gatwick airport. Fees were charged at a daily and weekly rate. Cars were marshalled in a set order to maximise the use of the land and enable them to be made available on the date of their owners’ return. In 1984 the council granted an established use certificate permitting use of the land for “commercial storage”. After that date a number of applications were made for planning permission but only two were granted, one in connection with a replacement building and the other for the change of use of an existing building. Planning permission was granted in 1986 for a change of use to a hotel at Southways with a condition prohibiting the use of the site for long term “storage” of cars associated with Gatwick airport. This permission was not implemented. In 1993 the appellant’s planning enforcement officer became aware that approximately 300 vehicles were parked on the site, a use which required planning permission. On July 27 1993 the council, concerned to protect sites in the strategic gap near Gatwick Airport from inappropriate forms of development such as use for the parking of motor vehicles, issued an enforcement notice and a stop notice. No appeal was made against the enforcement notice and it appeared that the car parking had ceased. However further breaches took place and in June 1995 the council sought an injunction to restrain threatened breaches of planning control on the land. The judge held that there had been no breach of planning control because parking of cars on the land was commercial storage within the established uses certificate. The council appealed contending that parking of cars was a normal incident of the general use of a car and that the judge had been wrong to hold that the activity concerned was parking not storage because it was incidental to another primary use of the relevant land.
Held The appeal was allowed.
1. The issue before the judge was primarily one of law and not exclusively of fact. It was necessary to determine the use of the land as a matter of planning law. For this purpose the activities of commercial storage and car parking in connection with Gatwick Airport were conceptually separate and distinct. A car was still in use when parked; it was probably not in use if it was put in store. The activity which took place clearly indicated a primary use of the land for car parking and not storage and was not within the permitted use of commercial storage.
2. The word storage did not include the parking of the car when it was an integral part of its everyday use. Giving the words parking and storage their ordinary and natural meaning, the activity was in connection with airport parking at Gatwick and not commercial storage: see Barnet London Borough Council v London Transport Property [1995] RA 235.
Alice Robinson (instructed by the solicitor to Crawley Borough Council) appeared for the appellants; Richard Mandel (instructed by Paul Davidson Taylor, of Horsham) appeared for the respondents.
