The background to Skerritts of Nottingham Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [2000] EGCS 43 was an enforcement notice directed against the erection of a seven-bay marquee, which was equipped, inter alia, with a timber floor, aluminium doors, a toilet annexe and its own power supply. The idea was to leave the marquee standing in the grounds of a listed hotel building for eight months in each year.
The notice had been upheld by an inspector, who concluded that the landowner’s endeavours involved the carrying out of a building operation, and consequently amounted to a “development” as defined in section 51 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
The question for the Court of Appeal was whether the trial judge had correctly ruled that the defendant’s inspector had applied the wrong test when considering the issue of permanence. The view taken in the court below, based upon an observation of Denning LJ in Cardiff Rating Authority v Guest Keen Baldwin’s Iron & Steel Co Ltd [1949] 1 KB 385, was that permanence was always a paramount consideration.
Not so, said the Court of Appeal. The inspector had correctly treated permanence as one of a mix of considerations, the other two being the size of the structure and its degree of attachment to the land. Whatever the position under rating law, “permanent” did not necessarily mean 365 days per year.
The case has to come with the usual health warning that it is only determinative of the correct approach. An inspector, faced with a similar structure, would be free to reach the opposite conclusion – always provided that he applied the right test.
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The background to Skerritts of Nottingham Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [2000] EGCS 43 was an enforcement notice directed against the erection of a seven-bay marquee, which was equipped, inter alia, with a timber floor, aluminium doors, a toilet annexe and its own power supply. The idea was to leave the marquee standing in the grounds of a listed hotel building for eight months in each year.
The notice had been upheld by an inspector, who concluded that the landowner’s endeavours involved the carrying out of a building operation, and consequently amounted to a “development” as defined in section 51 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
The question for the Court of Appeal was whether the trial judge had correctly ruled that the defendant’s inspector had applied the wrong test when considering the issue of permanence. The view taken in the court below, based upon an observation of Denning LJ in Cardiff Rating Authority v Guest Keen Baldwin’s Iron & Steel Co Ltd [1949] 1 KB 385, was that permanence was always a paramount consideration.
Not so, said the Court of Appeal. The inspector had correctly treated permanence as one of a mix of considerations, the other two being the size of the structure and its degree of attachment to the land. Whatever the position under rating law, “permanent” did not necessarily mean 365 days per year.
The case has to come with the usual health warning that it is only determinative of the correct approach. An inspector, faced with a similar structure, would be free to reach the opposite conclusion – always provided that he applied the right test.
