Swale Borough Council have won a four-year legal battle to stop a Kent landowner using his barn conversion as a home.
The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court ruling in favour of Roger Lee, who unlawfully converted the barn, in Seed Road, Newnham, into a house during the late 1990s.
It held that, because he had not occupied the barn for four consecutive years, the council were within the statutory time limits for bringing enforcement action against him.
The dispute began in May 2001, when the council refused to grant Lee a certificate of lawful development. They subsequently commenced enforcement proceedings requiring him to stop using it for residential purposes.
Although two inspectors dismissed Lee’s appeals in March 2002 and 2003, in September 2004, a third inspector quashed the enforcement notice and granted unconditional planning consent. That decision was upheld in the High Court by Evans-Lombe J, in March.
He found that, although Lee had not slept in the barn because he was required to live in a bail hostel in Maidstone, or while improvement works were being carried out, it was “not necessarily inconsistent” with its continued use as a dwelling.
However, the appeal judges said that the issue over the barn’s use was “largely one of fact”, and that the third planning inspector had been in error to decide that more than four years’ use had occurred without a significant break.
Keene LJ said: “There were substantial periods when the barn was not occupied for residential purposes”, adding that the fact that the barn had been available for residential use once the initial repairs were carried out, and had not been put to other uses, was “irrelevant” in the context of the planning application.
Lee acquired the barn in 1996. The previous owner had sporadically lived in two caravans that he had incorporated into the building’s structure, and Lee spent the following few years improving the facilities to make it suitable for use as a house.
Swale Borough Council v First Secretary of State and another Court of Appeal (Chadwick, Sedley and Keene LJJ) 17 November 2005.
References: EGi Legal News 18/11/05
