Caravan – Planning control – Injunction – Appellant council obtaining injunction preventing respondent bringing additional caravans on site in breach of planning regulations – Respondent putting portacabin on site – Appellant applying for respondent’s committal for breach of injunction – Whether judge erring in law in refusing application – Whether portacabin falling outside scope of injunction – Appeal dismissed
The appellants were the local planning authority for a site comprising agricultural land in the green belt. The site was occupied in breach of planning control by the respondent, who lived on one of ten plots on the site in a caravan with her three young children.
The appellants obtained an injunction restraining the respondent from allowing additional caravans to be brought onto the site, until trial or further order. The injunction was endorsed with a penal notice. The appellants then issued an enforcement notice specifying an apparent breach of planning control in materially changing the use of the site from agricultural use to the siting of caravans and/or mobile homes used for residential purposes. An application by the respondent for planning permission to change the use of the site was refused by the appellants and that decision was upheld by the Secretary of State.
The appellants subsequently applied for the committal of the respondent on the ground that she had breached the injunction by causing or allowing a further caravan to be brought onto the site. The respondent did not dispute that she had brought an additional structure onto the site but argued that it was not a caravan since it contained only a shower, an unused toilet, a freezer, a sink and a table top which was used for ironing and on which she had put a small tumble dryer.
The judge concluded that, on the facts and evidence before him, including photographs, he was not satisfied that the appellants had made out their case to the high standard required in committal proceedings in that the court was not satisfied that the structure in question was, at that moment, a caravan. It did not satisfy the definition of caravan within section 29 of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 since it was neither designed nor adapted for human habitation. The appellants appealed.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
Reading the judgment as a whole, the judge had taken the correct course of avoiding the overly narrow approach of holding that something could not be a caravan unless all the principal living functions were carried on in it and the overly wide approach that it was sufficient if it contained any domestic living space of any kind. The Judge’s ultimate conclusion was that it was for the appellants to make out their case to the high standard of proof required to be discharged in committal proceedings, and it they had failed to do so.
It was preferable to examine the meaning of “caravan” first in its ordinary, dictionary sense, and then seeing whether the injunction and its factual context provided any basis for a different or more refined meaning. The reference in the injunction to “further caravans” fell to be construed having regard to the type of caravans which had already been brought on to the site. In that context the respondent’s converted portacabin was outside the terms of the injunction and, on an application to commit, any uncertainties about the meaning of the order should be resolved in her favour.
The special nature of committal proceedings prompted a further material consideration which supported the interpretation of “caravan” in the injunction as meaning the same type of thing as the caravans already on the site at the time of the injunction. Breach of the injunction, which was endorsed with a penal notice, would give rise to various sanctions, including committal. That made it even more likely that the court intended the word “caravan” in the injunction to carry a clear, conventional meaning, easily understood and applied, and consistent with what was actually present and happening on the ground at the time of the injunction: Uratemp Ventures Ltd v Collins [2001] PLSCS 213, [2001] 43 EG 187 (CS), [2002] 1 AC 301 considered.
In the circumstances, it was not necessary to consider whether the application of the definition in section 29(1) of the 1960 Act, particularly the words “designed or adapted for human habitation”, would produce a different result. It was sufficient to say that, even if there was a presumption that the statutory definition applied and it would produce a different result, the presumption was rebutted by the contrary intention disclosed by the terms of the injunction and the context in which it was made.
Per curiam: What was in question here was not so much the interpretation of a statutory formula, but whether it was proper to find that the respondent was in contempt of the court’s injunction in circumstances where that contempt had to be proved to the criminal standard. It would have been appropriate for the appellants to return to court to vary or extend the terms of the injunction to make it perfectly clear that, in the interests of safeguarding the planning controls applicable to green belt land, no such structures should be permitted on the site, be they strictly speaking caravans or not.
David Lintott (instructed by Shared Legal Solutions) appeared for the appellants; Stephen Cottle (instructed by Bramwell Browne Odedra Solicitors, of Chesham) appeared for the respondent.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
