London’s High Court has ordered a couple who have lived on a farm near Preston for over 40 years to give up their home to Lancashire County Council.
After a legal dispute that has lasted for more than 13 years, and which has already been as far as the House of Lords on a previous occasion, Stanley Burnton J granted the council’s claim for possession of Pollards Farm.
Joseph Taylor has been the council’s tenant on the farm since 1962. He had claimed that the council’s possession proceedings were in breach of his human rights.
The proceedings followed years of wrangling over Taylor’s use of the land for processing and retailing milk and fruit juices.
In 1990, the council had first alleged that he was breaching his tenancy agreement by bringing onto the farm for processing milk and fruit juices produced elsewhere, rather than just processing his own.
After seven years, the council finally secured an arbitrator’s ruling that Taylor had breached his tenancy agreement.The arbitrator also approved the council’s notice to quit the land.
Taylor challenged those decisions unsuccessfully in the county court, the High Court and the Court of Appeal, and he was refused further permission to appeal by the House of Lords in July 2001.
Consequently, the council launched possession proceedings and today won the backing of Stanley Burnton J.
The judge said that Taylor had not established any breach under the European Convention on Human Rights, and that, even if he had, he would not necessarily have had a defence to the council’s claim for possession.
Lancashire County Council v Taylor and another Court of Appeal (Stanley Burnton J) 7 April 2004.
References: EGi Legal News 07/04/04
