Enforcement notice — Appeal — Original notice withdrawn and replacement issued — Claimant mistakenly putting date of original notice on appeal form — Whether appeal valid — Claim dismissed
The second defendant council issued two enforcement notices in respect of works that had been carried out by the claimant in order to facilitate vehicular access to, and parking for, his house. On the following day, they withdrew one of the notices and issued another to similar effect. Both the original and replacement notice were to take effect on the same date, by which time any appeal needed to have been lodged. The claimant posted appeal forms in good time, but mistakenly put the date of the original notice, and appended that notice instead of the replacement. The Planning Inspectorate was unaware that the original notice had been withdrawn until after the date upon which the notices took effect. When it discovered this, it rejected the appeal, considering it to be invalid.
The claimant challenged the decision of the inspectorate by way of judicial review, contending that his appeal had been valid. He submitted that: (i) section 174, which provided for the right of appeal, required only that notices of appeal be made in writing and received before the enforcement notice was to take effect, and did not require the date of the enforcement notice to be given; and (ii) the appeal form was to be interpreted as having the meaning that a reasonable person knowing the relevant facts would understand it to have, namely of appealing against the extant notice. The first defendant secretary of state, defending the approach of the inspectorate, submitted that it was implicit in section 174 that an appeal notice had to identify the enforcement notice to which it related, and since the claimant’s appeal form had clearly identified the original notice it had to be interpreted as an appeal against that notice.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
Although the claimant had intended to appeal against the extant notice, he had not done so. Since the appeal notice had expressly referred to the date of the original notice, which had also been appended, it was hard to see how the Planning Inspectorate could have interpreted it as an appeal against the replacement notice. Section 174 required written notice to be given of an appeal against “the” notice; the appeal notice therefore had to identify the enforcement notice to which it related. The claimant’s appeal notice had done so unequivocally, and there was no scope to interpret it as referring to the extant notice. Otherwise, this would open up a Pandora’s box of difficulties as to how the inspectorate was to identify an appellant’s intentions from matters other than the appeal notice. The effect of allowing the present claim would be to permit an appeal against the replacement notice out of time, for which the inspectorate had no jurisdiction.
Robert McCracken QC (instructed by Russells) appeared for the claimant; Jonathan Moffett (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant; the second defendants, Wycombe District Council, did not appear and were not represented.
Sally Dobson, barrister
