Gipsies — Country park car park — Resolution to move gipsies — Duty to provide caravan sites — Whether council acted ultra vires — Whether legitimate expectation of not being evicted without alternative site or communication — Application succeeds
The defendant council has a duty under the Caravan Sites Act 1968 to provide sites for gipsies. There have been gipsies in Brent since at least 1830 and a number have camped in a car park in the Fryent country park for some time. Following a public local inquiry, and the recommendations of an inspector in February 1987, planning permission was granted for one site and a temporary permission for another; the inspector recommended that the Fryent car park use should cease.
In March 1987 there were 50 caravans on the Fryent site. The council sent letters to the occupiers of 33 of the caravans explaining that a proper site would be provided, but meanwhile the site had to be cleared. On the same day all the caravans were removed, the site was cleared and the 33 “letter-holders”, including the applicant, were allowed back. The occupiers of the remaining caravans went back into possession; there was a further eviction, and again the non-letter-holders went back.
Eventually, in August 1988, the policy and resources urgency subcommittee of the defendant council resolved to evict all the gipsies from the car park and to do so without communicating to the letter-holders the withdrawal of the consent to them. The applicant applied for the judicial review of that decision and injunctions on the grounds that the council had (1) not considered whether the applicant had anywhere to go and that she was a letter-holder, and (2) created, by the letter of March 1987, an expectation that the letter-holders would not be evicted without an alternative site being provided.
Held The application succeeded. The Wednesbury principles and the decision in the Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service [1985] AC 374 applied. Following the issue of the letters in March 1987, there had been a regular practice of allowing the letter-holders back on to the site and this gave rise to a certain expectation.
The contents of circulars 28/77 and 44/78 were relevant considerations that had been ignored by the council; they had also had no regard to the March 1987 letters and their consequences. The pre-March 1987 resolution to deal with the problem of a gipsy site, the letters and the subsequent action of the council in allowing the letter-holders back after each eviction created a legitimate expectation that the letter-holders would not be evicted without the provision of an alternative site or without being informed. The council had failed to consult, comply with the law or consider the consequences for the gipsies; they had not communicated to the applicant any rational grounds for withdrawing the consent to the letter-holders.
Nicholas Blake (instructed by Harter & Loveless) appeared for the applicant; and Simon Pickles (instructed by the solicitor to the Brent London Borough Council) appeared for the defendants.