Gypsies — Local planning authority — Enforcement notice — Caravan site — Whether local authority entitled to exercise discretionary powers when injunction already obtained under county court procedure — Claim dismissed
The claimants were gypsies who occupied a green belt site within the defendants’ jurisdiction. One of the claimants owned the site but no planning permission had ever been obtained for its occupation as a caravan site. In May 2001, the defendants obtained an injunction pursuant to section 187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, restraining further development on the site and ordering the claimants to remove their vehicles by June 2001. Twenty-one separate planning applications were subsequently submitted by plot holders on the site, but all were refused in July 2001, prior to the issue of the enforcement notices. In January 2002, following a Court of Appeal decision in another case, the county court discharged those parts of the injunction requiring the claimants to vacate the land and to reinstate it.
The claimants appealed against both the defendants’ refusal of planning permission and the enforcement notices served in respect of the site. The inspector dismissed the claimants’ appeal, save that he varied the time for compliance with the enforcement to nine months, since alternative sites would have to be identified with the co-operation of the defendants, and this was likely to take longer than three months. The High Court dismissed the claimants’ application to quash the inspector’s decision in March 2003.
A further injunction under section 187B was obtained by the defendants, ordering the claimants to vacate the site and remove their vehicles by January 2004. The claimants failed to do so and therefore breached the injunction. Rather than returning to the county court to seek enforcement of the injunction by committal or otherwise, the defendants resolved to exercise their discretionary powers under section 178 of the 1990 Act to enter the land and to take the steps required by the enforcement notice to end the occupation. The claimants applied for judicial review, contending that it was irrational, illogical, unreasonable and unfair to, in effect, bypass the county court and consideration by the judge seized of the matter when the county court procedure provided by section 187B had been chosen.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
There was nothing in either section 178 or 187B to suggest that the section 178 discretion might not be exercised or would be limited where a local planning authority had already obtained an injunction applied for under section 187B.
Had the defendants acted as they had for no good reason, it could have been argued that they were acting unlawfully by applying concurrent procedures, but that was not the case here. The defendants had doubted the effectiveness of committal proceedings to bring about an end to the ongoing breach of planning control. As a result, they had exercised their discretion to use their section 178 powers. Had some of the claimants been committed, the site would not have been vacated, and there would be no useful purpose in sending to prison the fathers of some of the children on the site: South Bucks District Council v Porter [2003] UKHL 26; [2003] 2 PLR 101 considered.
Richard Hickmet (instructed by David Willshaw, of Honiton) appeared for the claimants; Conrad Rumney (instructed by the solicitor to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council) appeared for the defendants.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
