Enforcement notice — Motor vehicle business — Adjacent land being used for business expansion — Surrounding area mainly residential or suitable for B1 use — Inspector finding business use of applicants sui generis — Whether planning conditions to be imposed — Whether suggested highway agreement feasible — Inspector recommending applicants seek some other site — Inspector’s decision upheld
The appeal concerned Warm Turn, Aberbeeg Road, Abertillery, Gwent. The local planning authority had issued an enforcement notice against the unauthorised use of land for the storage and display of vehicles, and had also failed to give a decision within the statutory time-limit to an application for planning permission for change of use of land to form a car sales area and works access/highway to facilitate the change of use of the land. An inspector was appointed to determine the appeal and he stated that the main issue was whether the arguments of the applicants were sufficient to override the approved and adopted use planning policies for the area. The applicants’ business had started on an authorised site, but as business boomed that proved too small to accommodate the increased activity.
The inquiry was adjourned to give the applicants an opportunity to investigate the feasibility of moving to a larger reclaimed colliery site, but those negotiations failed. The inquiry reconvened and the inspector found that the appeal site was not in the right location for the expansion of the business in that there had been a rapid and massive increase in vehicle movements in and out of the site to the detriment of the local residents. Although arguments had been put forward for imposing planning conditions and for reaching agreement with the highway authority to secure highway improvement, the inspector found that those would not succeed in eradicating all the problems generated by a secondhand car business. He also held that the change of use would be contrary to the development plan. The applicants appealed.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The inspector took the view, and there was no issue as to this, that the applicants’ business was sui generis use.
2. That use was not within any use class of the Use Classes Order 1987 and was in conflict with the development plan, which proposed small light industrial units of high-quality design for land allocated for that purpose.
3. The inspector noted the requirements for a section 106 agreement, but found it inappropriate because it required that the developer have an interest in the land. However, in view of the highways objection which existed, the proposed highway works were not on land in which the applicants had an interest.
4. In other words, a developer could not enter into an agreement which was not worth its salt because an applicant had to have a sufficient interest in the land relating to the undertaking in order to discharge the obligation under the agreement.
5. With regard to a Grampian condition, where development was precluded until other works had been completed on other land, again the land for “other works” was outside the applicants’ control. If the negative precondition had been granted there would have been an immediate breach of planning control. The inspector had made his decision as a matter of policy and common sense.
Vernon Pugh QC and Ian Ponter (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the applicants; Alice Robinson (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; Anthony Porten QC and Nicholas Cooke (instructed by the solicitor to Blaneau Borough Council) appeared for the local planning authority.
