The court, in I’m Your Man Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment [1998] EWHC 866 (Admin); [1998] 4 PLR 107, held that there is no express or implied power for a local planning authority (LPA) or the Secretary of State to impose a legally enforceable limitation on a planning permission granted pursuant to an application. (Such a limitation is only available or enforceable under the Planning Acts by way of a development order.) Therefore, if anything is to be effectively prohibited on the grant of such a planning permission, it must be the subject of an express condition. Additionally, as the court made clear, so such condition may be implied from the description of the permitted development.
In that case, planning permission was granted on appeal for a material change of use of buildings for a period of seven years. Because of the absence of an express condition requiring cessation of that use at the end of the seven year period, the court held that the planning permission was, in law, a permanent one.
The limitation in I’m Your Man was clearly a temporal one, but the court has since applied the underlying principle in cases where the limitation was a substantive one. Now, in Cotswold Grange Country Park LLP v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2014] EWHC 1138 (Admin) the principle has once more been applied.
There the claimant had the benefit of planning permission granted in 2010 to use land as a site for 54 static caravans for year round holiday occupation The only relevant condition imposed on the grant was – for present purposes – one prohibiting any of the 54 caravans to be occupied as a person’s sole or main place of residence. The LPA later refused to grant the claimant a lawful development certificate (LDC) for the proposed siting on the land of an additional six caravans for residential use. On appeal, an inspector upheld that refusal, concluding that this “would be in conflict with the terms of the 2010 planning permission”.
The court allowed the claimant’s application to quash the inspector’s decision, holding that the condition (above) did not limit the total number of caravans that could be stationed on the site. And applying the reasoning in I’m Your Man, no such condition could be implied from the description of the permitted development in the 2010 planning permission. Accordingly, the inspector had erred in law. Furthermore, he should then have gone on the address the question whether an additional six caravans would amount to a material change of use. The answer to that question would govern whether or not a LDC should be granted.
John Martin is a planning law consultant
