To justify a final anticipatory injunction, an applicant must establish a strong possibility that unless restrained, the defendant will act in breach of the claimant’s rights and that if it does so the resulting harm will be so grave and irreparable that damages would be inadequate.
The High Court has considered these provisions in dismissing an application for a final injunction in St Albans City and District Council v Taylerson and others [2024] EWHC 602 (KB).
The application concerned land adjacent to the Redbourn bypass. In March 2021, the council obtained an interlocutory injunction to restrain various actions with the aim of unlawfully developing the land and the order had been continued since then.
The injunction was sought against the fifth defendant, Mr Bygg Limited, owner of the land, and the fourth defendant, unknown newcomers. Myles Green, formerly known as Myles Cash and brother of the second defendant, James Cash, was the sole director and owner of the company.
The council placed significant weight on other land in Buckinghamshire owned and developed by James Cash and his brothers where a stop notice was breached in support of its fears for the land. However, prior to the hearing, James Cash had provided an undertaking in substantially the form sought at trial, as well as seeking to resolve the overall dispute. It was not proven on the balance of probabilities that the Myles Cash involved in the Buckinghamshire site was Myles Green who had changed his name.
While the council could see no purpose to the company owning the land if it was not for unauthorised development, Green’s evidence was that he was speculating on possible future changes in the planning status of the land and aiming to rent it out as grazing land in the meantime.
The court rejected the council’s attempt to impugn the company’s reliance on a 1992 planning permission for the creation of a touring caravan park on the land through unethical conduct and its submission that the explanation for Green’s change of name – a feud with another traveller family when he had been shot and wounded, subsequently going on the run – should be dismissed.
The council had delayed in pursuing the claim and there was an absence of evidence that other measures had failed: no enforcement action was taken over a boundary fence which was too high; or over breach of a licence for felling trees on the land. The evidence established, contrary to the council’s claims, that conduct by the company and Green was consistent with seeking to comply with planning rules.
Louise Clark is a property law consultant and mediator
