Appellant using site on a modest scale for storage of vehicles – Use subsequently intensified – Enforcement notice prohibiting vehicle storage absolutely – Whether earlier use should have been preserved under 10-year rule – Whether inspector empowered to widen terms of notice – Appeal dismissed
In 1985 the appellant (L) acquired a site near Billericay, Essex, which at no material time had been used for the storing or maintenance of vehicles. Commencing shortly after his purchase L, who was in the vehicle recovery business, used the land for storing his recovery truck and for indulging his hobby (shared with a number of friends) of repairing and renovating old vehicles (the limited uses). From 1990 or thereabouts many more vehicles were brought on to the site as L extended his business interests to the repair and respraying of cars and other vehicles. Over the same period L brought a number of mobile homes on to the site, one of which served as an office for running the vehicle recovery business. On July 9 1996 L was served with an enforcement notice that required him, inter alia, to stop using the site for uses in association with the storage, recovery, sale and repair of motor vehicles and to remove from the site “all portacabins and the mobile home”. L appealed to the Secretary of State, whose inspector, by decision letter dated July 7 1997, upheld the notice and ordered amendments forbidding use of the site “as a base for a vehicle recovery business” and requiring the removal of “all portacabins and mobile homes”. In reaching his decision, the inspector rejected L’s claim that no enforcement proceedings could be taken as the site had been used in the manner complained of for more than 10 years prior to the issue of the notice. L appealed to the High Court. Relying on the principle laid down in Mansi v Elstree Rural District Council (1964) 16 P&CR 153, L contended that the inspector had failed to consider whether the enforcement notice should have been so worded so as to exclude the limited uses from its operation.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The inspector did not need to consider the Mansi principle (which protected an established use from an enforcement notice directed at a subsequent wider use) as it was clear from the judgment in that case that the more limited use must have begun more than 10 years before the material change of use that the enforcement notice sought to correct. From the findings made by the inspector it was plain that the relevant change of use was the transformation (in the early 1990s) of L’s hobby activities into an extensive commercial operation. Nor was the inspector at fault for failing to give reasons for not applying the principle, as no argument on Mansi lines had been advanced at the inquiry.
2. The inspector’s power, under section 176(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, to vary the terms of the enforcement was, as L maintained, subject to the condition that he had to be satisfied that no injustice would be caused to the appellant. However, it did not follow that injustice would necessarily be caused by a widening of those terms of the notice; nor could such a proposition be derived from Burner v Secretary of State for the Environment [1983] JPL 459: cf Hammond v Secretary of State for the Environment [1997] JPL 724. L had not established that no reasonable inspector would have ordered the amendments.
Peter Harrison (instructed by Thomas Lindsey Brown, of Southend-on-Sea) appeared for the appellant; Alice Robinson (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent, the Secretary of State for the Environment; the second respondents, Basildon District Council, did not appear and were not represented.
