Businesses and other landowners have been advised to take note of today’s Supreme Court nuisance ruling in respect of a Suffolk motorsports stadium.
James Picknell, Partner at Mundays, said that the ruling provides important guidance on nuisance claims.
He said: “Disagreeing with the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court has held that activities carried out on land by a party against whom nuisance is alleged can only be taken into account when assessing the character of the locality if those activities do not cause a nuisance. Therefore, just because particular activities have been ongoing by a defendant for a number of years, as in this case, does not mean that all of those activities ‘go into the pot’ when defining the character of the locality.
“The court also commented that, the fact that a particular use of land is permitted by a planning permission does not give a landowner any certainty that the ‘permitted’ activities will not amount to a nuisance. Businesses must be alive to this.”
But he added: “However, the court also held that there may be some occasions when the terms of the planning permission could be of some relevance in determining nuisance cases.
“Interestingly, the court also held that it is possible to acquire a prescriptive right to create noise which would otherwise be considered a nuisance, although providing evidence to support such a claim may be difficult.”
Paul Tonkin, senior associate in Hogan Lovells’ real estate team, said that, though the decision makes clear that developers and landowners cannot rely upon planning permission as a “carte blanche” to cause a nuisance to their neighbours, the fact that an activity has planning permission may be relevant to whether an injunction should be granted to prevent the nuisance.
Welcoming the ruling, he added: “The message from the Supreme Court is that judges may have been granting injunctions too readily in recent years and a retreat from this is likely to be welcome news for developers.”
The Supreme Court allowed an appeal by a couple who claimed they were unaware, when they bought their Suffolk property, that it was less than a kilometre away from a stadium and track used for motorsports have triumphed in a Supreme Court noise nuisance claim.
The court restored a High Court ruling in which Katherine Lawrence and Raymond Shields – whose home at Fenland, Cooks Drove, West Row, near Mildenhall, is just 560 metres from the West Row stadium, home of the successful Fen Tigers speedway team – obtained an injunction and damages against the second and third defendant, Mr David Coventry and Moto–Land UK Limited. The Court of Appeal had overturned the ruling.
The Supreme Court stayed the injunction until Lawrence and Shields’ home has been rebuilt following fire damage, but Lord Neuberger said that, when and if the matter goes back before the judge, he should be entitled to consider whether to discharge the injunction and award damages for future nuisance instead.
Lawrence and anr v Coventry and ors Supreme Court (Neuberger, Mance, Clarke, Sumption and Carnwath) 26 February 2014
Stephen Hockman QC and William Upton (Instructed by Richard Buxton Environmental and Public Law) for the appellants
Robert McCracken QC and Sebastian Kokelaar (Instructed by Pooley Bendall Watson) for the respondents
