Outline planning permission — Five holiday villages — Permission granted in 1964 — Specified operation to be carried out — Commencement of operations on spur road — Whether planning permission still valid — Judgment for plaintiff
In 1964 outline planning permission was granted for the construction of five holiday villages consisting of some 800 dwellings on about 70 acres of land at Black Rock Sands, Morfa Bychan, near Portmadoc, North Wales, within the area of the defendant council. The site was an area of dunes immediately behind the beach at Black Rock Sands and next to a substantial caravan park. A Class 3 road ran along the northern boundary of the site, which was roughly triangular. The present plaintiffs’ predecessors in title were speculative builders and acquired their interest in 1962. The site presented problems and the then county council imposed a number of conditions, some of which required prior approval before development could commence. The developers were aware that there was a proposal for betterment levy under the Land Commission Act 1967 and that it was intended to place time-limits on the validity for planning permissions. By section 64(4) of the Act a project would be taken to have begun “on the earliest day on which any specified operation comprised in the project … began to be carried”. A specified operation was defined to include any operation in the course of laying out or constructing a road or part of a road. Otherwise, by section 27, betterment levy would be payable if a material development was begun on or after April 6 1967. Time-limits were subsequently imposed by the Town and Country Planning Act 1968. There were instructions from the developers that a “specified operation”, therefore, should be carried out, and permission for construction on the spur road was applied for on March 16 1967. That was approved on April 3. There was a dispute whether any work was in fact carried out. No signs were found of the road on a council inspection in 1977. However, a letter from the council on August 5 1968 referred to a “partly constructed access road”. Agecrest acquired the site in 1986 and made unsuccessful attempts to persuade the council to accept the validity of the planning permission, the council themselves having received legal advice to that effect. It was common ground that only if the work done in April 1967 amounted to the beginning of the development would the planning permission granted in 1964 still be valid.
Held Judgment was given for the plaintiff.
1. It would have been extraordinary if, having gone to such efforts to obtain permission to construct the spur road to avoid the levy, nothing had then been done. It might well be that not all the work was completed, but the court was satisfied that enough was done to comply with section 64 of the Land Commission Act 1967.
2. The council submitted that there was no intention that the development be carried out and that the work was done solely to avoid the possibility of paying betterment levy should development take place.
3. The evidence showed that there was also concern to protect the planning permission against the imposition of time-limits which were imposed in due course under the town and country planning legislation.
4. The council argued that the clear purpose of the limits imposed was to prevent the continued existence of planning permission to obtain enhanced value for the land at some unknown future date. However, that disregarded the benevolent objects of the legislation. There had to be an intention to develop when the operation was genuinely carried out, but it did not have to be immediate. Work was done after 1967 to progress the development.
Malcolm Spence QC James Findlay and Christopher Heather (instructed by Aaron & Partners) appeared for the plaintiff developers; Robin Barratt QC, John Hobson and Karen Steyn (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the respondent planning authority.
