Curtilage — Claimant erecting chain-link fence on driveway crossing parkland — Whether land constituting curtilage for planning purposes — Claim allowed
The claimant owned a Grade II listed building, associated outbuildings and an extensive acreage of parkland. The house was connected to a small access road by a lengthy driveway, along which the appellant erected a substantial chain-link fence in order to deter trespassers. The second defendants issued an enforcement notice on the ground that the fence required planning permission because it constituted a development within the curtilage of a listed building. On appeal, an inspector upheld the notice, and the claimant subsequently challenged his decision.
Held: The claim was allowed.
There was no statutory definition of “curtilage”, and it therefore fell to be established by the dictionary definition and by previous case law. In Dyer v Dorset County Council [1989] QB 346, “curtilage” was held to be a small courtyard or piece of land attached to a dwellinghouse and forming an enclosure, and the hereditament had to be so closely associated with the curtilage as to form part and parcel of it. Dyer was later considered in Skerritts of Nottingham Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (No 2) [2000] 2 PLR 84. In that case, it was held that in order to determine whether a structure that was at some distance from a listed building fell within the curtilage of that building, considerations of function, history, ownership and physical layout of the land were all material. These factors could be determinative of the question, although the decision maker should also bear in mind the essential concept of size, since curtilage generally applied to a relatively small area.
Applying these considerations, the inspector had clearly been wrong to conclude that the extensive parkland, or the driveway running through it, constituted curtilage. The fence did not, therefore, fall within the curtilage of the property, and did not require planning permission.
Ian Albutt (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the claimant; Sarah-Jane Davies (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; the second defendants did not appear and were not represented.
Vivienne Lane, barrister
