Council serving enforcement notice for change of use – Appellant appealing – Whether inspector disregarding or misunderstanding material evidence – Whether inspector wrongly concluding established use of land was for a dwelling – Appeal dismissed
Following complaints from the public, the second respondents, Wealden District Council, served an enforcement notice on the appellant, who had been running a coach and tour business and organising banquets, wedding receptions, public conferences and medieval events. The notice alleged breach of planning control by change of use of land and buildings at Bolebroke Castle, Edenbridge Road, Hartfield, from a dwellinghouse to a mixed use as a dwellinghouse and a use for the purposes of the holding of functions for commercial purposes and for a use within Class C1 of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, namley as a boarding or guest house. The inspector dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the notice.
The applicant appealed contending that the inspector had wrongly interpreted his own findings of the evidence and that he should have found that the established use of the land before 1985, from when the ten-year period had started to run, had been a mixed use as a dwelling and for commercial purposes. It was also contended that the inspector was wrong in law in failing to treat the level of use in connection with the coach and tour business as being a commercial use and treating it as merely ancillary to the use of the castle as a dwelling, and that accordingly there was an error in law in failing to amend the enforcement notice to safeguard the commercial use in accordance with the well established principle in Mansii v Elstree Rural District Council (1964) 16 P&CR 153.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The inspector held that the castle was used in connection with the appellant’s coach and tour business from before 1985 and for “banquets” and that the number of people attending those functions were small. He also held that the evidence for other events taking place on any scale before the end of 1985 had not been made out. That conclusion was a matter of fact and degree to be determined in his planning judgment and accordingly the appellant had not established either an error in the inspector’s findings, or an error of law in his interpretation of the facts or his conclusions on the facts found.
2. Applying the test proposed in Cord v Secretary of State for the Environment [1981] JPL 40, it was apparent from the notice that the appellant would be able to carry on the same low level of commercial or non-domestic activity as the inspector found he was carrying on before the end of 1985, and at a level which did not amount to a material change of use. It would have been wrong to amend to notice to identify any specific activity or level of activity because that might prove restrictive of the appellant’s rights.
Robert White (instructed by Burstows, of Crawley) appeared for the appellant; John Litton (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the Secretary of State for the Environment; the second respondents, Wealdon District Council, did not appear and were not represented.
