Singh v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 3379 (Admin); [2011] PLSCS 3 provides a warning where the secretary of state or his inspector is minded to amend an enforcement notice on an appeal against it. Section 176(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 grants the secretary of state what has often been described as a “wide” power to amend an enforcement notice in such circumstances. More specifically, he may correct any defect, error or misdescription in the notice, or vary its terms, if he is satisfied that this will not cause injustice to the appellant or the local planning authority (LPA).
In Singh, the appellant had extended two buildings that he owned and used as houses in multiple occupation and increased the number of units in each. The LPA considered that this gave rise to a number of breaches of planning control, and it issued three enforcement notices requiring him to reduce the number of units and the size of the extensions. The appellant appealed to the secretary of state, and at the inquiry argued successfully that in a number of respects the notices were unclear. The inspector deleted from the notices references to “use” of the buildings as bedsits, leaving them intact in respect of allegations of operational development without planning permission. As a consequence, he reached no conclusions on the deleted matters.
The appellant appealed under section 289. He contended that the course of action taken by the inspector deprived him of findings and conclusions at the appeal that might well have ended all further arguments on those matters.
The judge took the view that, had it been necessary to decide the point, he would have held on the facts that the deletions did amount to “variations” for the purposes of section 176 of the 1990 Act. Deleting something of necessity involves a variation of what was previously there. The more significant issue, however, was whether this caused an injustice to the appellant. He held that it did, and remitted the matter to the secretary of state for redetermination.
In fairness to the inspector, however, the judge pointed out that he had not intended to deprive the appellant unfairly of consideration of some of his grounds of appeal, and had seen the course that he had adopted as being the logical extension of the decision he had made in respect of the clarity of the enforcement notices.
John Martin is a freelance writer
