Land allocated to green belt – Whether land so allocated falling within definition of blighted land for purposes of Town and Country Planning Act, section 149(1) and Schedule 3.
The appellant was the owner of a house and five acres of adjoining land in the village of Five Oaks Green, near Tonbridge, Kent. According to the Kent structure plan 1980 the appellant’s land was included within the outer boundary of the metropolitan green belt as defined in that plan. The appellant had objected to the deposit local plan seeking to prevent the application of green belt policies to the land which he owned at the rear of his house but his objections were not upheld. The local plan was adopted in March 1996. The appellant then served a blight notice claiming that his land fell within para 1 of section 192 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and that he had been unable to sell his interest in the land except at a price substantially lower than that at which he might reasonably have expected to sell . The notice required the council to purchase his interest in the land for £1m.
The issue as to whether the appellant’s land was blighted land within the meaning of section 149(1) and Schedule 13 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was ordered to be tried as a preliminary point of law, and the Lands Tribunal decided that the land was not blighted land. The appellant appealed by way of case stated pursuant to section 3(4) of the Lands Tribunal Act 1949.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
The only question for the court was whether the allocation of land to the green belt fell within the definition of blighted land in para 2 of Schedule 13 to the 1990 Act. There was no doubt as to the lawfulness of the designation, but even though land so designated was thereby prevented from being developed, the fact that the local authority did not require the land for any purpose did not mean that it became blighted land within the meaning of section 149(1). The allocation of land, in order to attract the provisions regarding blight, had to be "for the purpose of the exercise of some power or duty of the local authority" (see per Lord Evershed MR in Bolton Corporation v Owen [1962] 1 QB 470). It could be said that the allocation of the land to the green belt was itself an exercise of the power or duty to determine the area to which the green belt policy should apply. In the instant case it was not an allocation for the purpose of any exercise of such power or duty. No development of land was contemplated by the local authority and the purposes of the designation was merely to protect the land. Accordingly, the answer to the question posed by the case stated was that the land was not blighted within the meaning of the Act .
The appellant, Mr Titterrell, appeared in person; David Lamming (instructed by the solicitor to the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council) appeared for the respondents.
