Town and country planning — Building of special architectural or historic interest – Listed building — Alterations – Appellants purchasing 18th century cottage – Respondents refusing application for planning permission to make alterations – Respondents seeking interim injunction to stop unauthorised works – Whether cottage listed building within Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 – Appeal dismissed
In June 2006, the appellants purchased an 18th century farm worker’s cottage and applied for planning permission to make alterations to the building. The respondent local planning authority refused permission and, on 30 June 2008, applied for an interim injunction to stop unauthorised works.
A preliminary issue arose as to whether the cottage was “a listed building” within the meaning of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. The list relied on by the respondents gave the name address of the property as “High House Cottage” Corkscrew Lane, Stone-cum-Ebony; that was also how the property was noted on the Local Land Charges Register. That was not, however, the name of the house purchased by the appellants. On 22 April 2009, the list was amended to show the correct address.
The appellants argued that the amended list could not be used retrospectively, but could be relied on only for the future. The respondents did not rely on the 2009 amendment but contended that the cottage had been listed since 1979. The judge held that the building described in the entry, which included Ordnance Survey map references, fitted the appellants’ house, even though the name and address had been incorrectly entered in the list and on the register. He concluded that an inaccurate name and address was not fatal to the identification of the property and that, on the evidence, given the lack of inconsistency or ambiguity, the cottage was a listed building for the purposes of the 1990 Act.
The appellants appealed, contending that the cottage had not been listed at the material time within the meaning of the Act. Moreover, the discrepancies in the name, address and descriptive details in the listing rendered ineffective the official entry relied on by the respondents for the purpose of their enforcement measures.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) The basic framework of the 1990 Act was the compilation of an authoritative and publicly accessible list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. The essential point was that it should be reasonably possible for the public to ascertain from an inspection of the list whether a particular building was listed; that was a matter of identification from all the information available on the list. Using the correct name should be the general practice, but it was not a statutory requirement that the listing was effective only if entered under a unique correct name that should always take precedence over a verbal description, a map reference to a geographical location or some other intelligible means of identification.
The legislative regime of the 1990 Act required the compilation of an official list of buildings, not names; buildings had a real physical existence and an actual geographical location. Depending on the circumstances, a building might be identifiable by a combination of details referred to in the list and therefore be effectively listed, even though the listed name may be incorrect: Edinburgh City Council v Secretary of State for Scotland [1997] EGCS 140 considered.
(2) Furthermore, the respondents were entitled to rely on the map references given in the list for the purpose of construing it and identifying which building was listed. An inaccurate name in the list did not render the listing ineffective if, read as a whole, the entry correctly identified the location of an actual building. The significance and effect of a map reference in the listing was not excluded, overridden or cancelled by the entry of the name of a building or the incorrect name of a building. The entry had to be read and interpreted by reference to all its interconnected parts; exclusive reliance on a correct name or address would demand a degree of clarity and precision that did not reflect real life.
The map references were included in the entry for a reason. Their obvious purpose was to identify a listed building by its location. Although the sheet and the annotated map were not reproduced in or physically attached to the list, they were incorporated into it by the references that it contained. It was trite law that the contents of one document might be incorporated into another in that cross-referential way. When read together with the rest of the entry and interpreted as a whole, the map pinpointed the exact location of the appellants’ building. The annotated map reference did not refer to any other building in the vicinity, as the appellants had conceded.
Accordingly, on the true construction of the entry invoked by the respondents, the appellants’ cottage was a listed building at the material date.
Peter Harrison QC (instructed by Kingsfords, of Ashford) appeared for the appellants; Charles Mynors and Paul Tapsell (instructed by the legal department of Ashford Borough Council) appeared for the respondents.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
