Listed building — Development — Local authority — Members of conservation advisory committee also on planning committee — Whether dual membership giving rise to appearance of bias — Whether planning committee having sufficient information to reach decisions — Claim allowed
A dispute over the ownership of a church school site in Kent is to be considered by the House of Lords later this year and has potential significance for many valuable church school sites around the country.
The law lords have granted permission for genealogists Simon and Nathan Fraser to challenge an appeal court ruling in favour of Canterbury Diocesan Board of Finance over ownership of a former school site in Kent.
In the High Court last year, Lewison J found in favour of the Frasers in a preliminary round of their attempt to prove that they are entitled to the value of St Philip’s Infant School, Melville Road, Maidstone, which closed in 1995.
The judge rejected claims by the board that the Maidstone site had “reverted” to it prior to 17 August 1975, 12 years before the Reverter of Sites Act 1987 came into force. However, the Appeal Court backed the board’s claim on the basis that a trust upon which it had been conveyed had been breached, in that the school had allegedly been used to educate members of the parish who were not of the “poorer classes”.
In an argument that is expected to be echoed when the case is heard by the law lords, the board’s counsel, Vivian Chapman, told the Appeal Court that the purpose of the 1866 trust was to educate only the poor of the parish, and not the poor of the parish and others.
Fraser v Canterbury Diocesan Board of Finance and another House of Lords
References: EGi Legal News 12/05/04
