Town and country planning — Green belt — Unauthorised use of land — Planning application — Gypsies and travellers occupying green-belt land in breach of planning control and enforcement notice — Council obtaining injunction to evict — Whether grant of injunction proportionate interference with appellants’ human rights — Appeal dismissed
The appellants were gypsies and Irish travellers who occupied a sensitive green-belt site in breach of planning regulations and an enforcement notice. The respondent local planning authority sought an injunction to remove them from the site; their entitlement to do so was not in issue. The only question before the judge was whether the obligation to comply with the injunction should be stayed pending the determination of a planning application that the appellants proposed to make.
The judge granted the injunction, but allowed the appellants one month’s suspension. The first appellant, however, was granted a two-month suspension because an ailing elderly relative was living with him.
The appellants appealed, contending that the judge’s decision was disproportionate to the right to respect for their homes under to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Held (Sedley LJ dissenting): The appeal was dismissed.
The judge had been right to make the order. In the light of their appeal, the appellants had benefitted from an eight-month period of grace and they should resign themselves to the need to leave the site subject to the period of grace as allowed by the judge.
Gypsies and others who travelled in caravans with no permanent place to rest could rightly complain that their plight reflected a failure on the part of some authorities to comply with their statutory duty to provide sites. However, that could not enable them to stop wherever they chose and contend that their rights under Article 8 entitled them to remain.
In the present case, the overall picture was particularly unattractive. The site in question was in a very sensitive part of the green belt, where gypsies had already fought and lost a lengthy planning battle. It was, to the appellants’ knowledge, subject to an enforcement notice, and court orders had been flouted. In all the circumstances, this was a case where the legitimate aim of maintaining a planning regime made it necessary to interfere with the Article 8 rights of the appellants. Moreover, the prospect of planning permission being granted for this site was remote. The judge had carried out the appropriate balancing exercise, and it could not be said that he had reached a conclusion that no reasonable judge could have reached.
Marc Willers (instructed by Bramwell Browne Odedra, of Chesham) appeared for the appellants; James Findlay (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared for the respondents.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
