In Fowler v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2012] EWHC 2770 (Admin) the claimant sought to quash the decision of an inspector on appeal to refuse listed building consent and planning permission for the demolition of a Grade II listed house in poor structural condition and its reconstruction and extension. The claimant owned the house (with his brother) but did not live in it. He intended to live in it after its redevelopment. The inspector had concluded that the evidence relating to the structural instability of the house was not sufficient to justify its demolition entirely, when there was also evidence from respected experts that the structure at least in part was capable of being salvaged. Two of the claimant’s grounds alleged breaches of, respectively, Article 1 of the First Protocol to the ECHR and Article 8 of the ECHR itself.
Article 1 of the First Protocol provides that everyone is entitled to peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. The court held that the inspector’s decision could not be read as an interference with that right for the following reasons. (1) The consequence of that decision was a continuation of a state of affairs that currently existed. (2) The right to peaceful enjoyment of the house did not include the right to develop it in whatever manner the claimant thought appropriate. (3) The right, in any event, is not an unqualified one. The Article reserves “the right of a state to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest”.
Article 8 of the ECHR provides that everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. Again, the court held that the inspector’s decision did not amount to a breach of that right for these reasons. (1) The right to respect for family life does not mean that a person has the right to conduct family life at a particular place of his choosing. (2) At the time of the hearing before the inspector, the claimant was conducting family life at another property. (3) This right also is a qualified one. It could not be argued that the lawful application of planning control constituted an unjustified or disproportionate interference with the right to respect for private life in the context of this case.
John Martin
