Caravan park – Private property – Roadway – Definition of “road” – Appellant challenging conviction of driving on road while disqualified– Whether magistrates erring in defining road as any highway or other road to which public had access – Appeal dismissed
The appellant motorist was convicted of driving while disqualified, having driven a motor vehicle on various roadways within a caravan park and other areas. He was also charged with driving without a insurance. He pleaded guilty to the charge of driving a without an insurance policy on the basis that the roadways were public places.
With regard to the first charge, the magistrates determined as a preliminary issue that roadways were “roads” for the purposes of section 103 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. They found that: (i) the application of the statutory term “road” was a matter of fact to be determined by a tribunal. properly directing itself in law in the light of all the circumstances; (ii) the public had access to the site throughout the year and used the roadways to access a public beach without restriction; (iii) the roadways had road markings, speed ramps and speed signs that made them easily identifiable as routes leading from one point to another; (iv) there was a public footpath to which the public had unrestricted access along part of the roadways that fell within the definition of “highway”; and (v) the word “road” meant any highway and any other road to which the public had access.
In the light of those findings the appellant pleaded guilty to an offence of driving while disqualified but challenged the magistrates’ findings by way of case stated. The High Court had to determine whether the magistrates, having heard the evidence, were entitled to conclude that a “road” meant “any highway and any other road to which the public had access”, so that the roadways constituted roads for the purposes of section 103.
The appellant argued that the magistrates had erred in law since there was no vehicular through-route on the caravan site which was private property. Moreover, the fact that there was a public footpath on part of the roadway which constituted a highway, did not mean that the roadways amounted to a “road” within the ordinary meaning of that word.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) The magistrates were entitled to find that the roadways were roads for the purposes of section 103.
(2) The appellant had acknowledged that the roadways were a public place, but also followed points between defined edges used by the public as a route to the beach. In that respect, the instant case could be distinguished from R (on the application of Dunmill) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2004] EWHC 1700 (Admin), in which the purported “road” was on grass and had no evidence of defined edges.
(3 Moreover, a footpath was capable of falling within the definition of a road even if it did not possess the other characteristics of a road such as length and width: Suffolk County Council v Mason [1979] AC 705 applied.
(4) It made no difference that the roadway ended at a point that was not coterminous with the public footpath because the public footpath was a road within the ordinary sense of the word and for the purposes of the statutory definition.
Kathryn Hughes (instructed by Lowless & Lowless) appeared for the appellant; Nicholas Sefton (instructed by the Haverfordwest Crown Prosecution Service) appeared for the respondent.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
