Planning permission — Land — Compulsory purchase order — Time limit for starting development — Claimants challenging compulsory purchase orders — Second defendants commencing work on own land to preserve planning permission — Whether defendant initiating development in respect of claimants’ land — Claim dismissed
The second defendant council granted themselves planning permission for the improvement of a highway. The permission contained the standard condition that the development should begin within five years. The claimants objected to two compulsory purchase orders made on their land in connection with the development. While the first defendant was considering their statutory objections, the five-year time limit expired. However, the second defendants had started work on a stretch of land that they already owned in order to preserve the planning permission.
The first defendant subsequently confirmed the compulsory purchase orders, but the claimants applied under section 23 of the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 to challenge that decision. An issue arose as to whether the development could be taken to have been initiated according to section 56 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The claimants contended that, because the second defendants already owned the land upon which work had been started within the five-year time limit, the initiation of the development should not bind their land.
Section 56 provided that development of land should be taken to have been initiated if the development consisted of the execution of operations at the time those operations were begun. Development should be taken to have begun on the earliest date upon which any material operation comprised in the development began to be carried out.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
There was no reason in principle why section 56 should not apply in the present case, because it applied to any other in which the question of the initiation of the development was at issue. It could make no difference to the principle that a starting point had to be identified in order to decide whether planning permission remained extant or whether the land that was the subject of the permission was, at the moment of commencement, in the ownership of the developer or the developer and others.
The purpose of section 56 was to provide the circumstances within which a valid planning permission would be preserved. Since there was a limit upon the longevity of an uncommenced development pursuant to planning permission, it was necessary to define the circumstances in which it could be said that development had commenced pursuant to planning permission. The test was an objective one, and the subjective intention of the developer was irrelevant to the question of whether the development had commenced: Riordan Communications Ltd v South Buckinghamshire District Council (1999) 81 P&CR 85 and Malvern Hills District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment (1983) 46 P&CR considered.
The first and second claimants appeared in person and by their representative; Rhodri Williams and Katy Morgan (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; Milwyn Jarman QC (instructed by the solicitor to Gwynedd County Council) appeared for the second defendants.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
