A Hastings landowner has failed in its High Court challenge to an inspector’s backing for enforcement action by East Sussex County Council alleging unlawful use of the site as a waste-transfer station, skip-hire business, and depot for refuse-collection vehicles.
MDJ Light Bros (SP) Ltd claimed that the site had been used as a waste station from as early as 1977, nearly 20 years before it took over the farm in 1996. It also argued that, far from being used as a depot for the operation of refuse collection vehicles, it was being used to store 14 vehicles only while maintenance work was being carried out.
It claimed that the inspector’s finding that it was responsible for a material change of use of the land without permission was based upon a number of legal errors and should be quashed.
Dismissing the appeal, Sullivan J said that he considered that the inspector had been entitled to reach that decision, which was based upon evidence that, from 1993 until the site was acquired by MDJ, waste removal from the site had ceased. The inspector had taken the view that this amounted to a change of use and that the permitted use had, therefore, not continued, uninterrupted, for the required period.
MDJ Light Bros (SP) Ltd v First Secretary of State Queen’s Bench Division (Sullivan J) 12 May 2003.
References: PLS News 14/04/03
