England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
(Mr Justice Turner)

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2 Monday, 25th February 2002

1. LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY: This application before the court is made by Mr. Monen in person. He begins by seeking an adjournment of the hearing because he wants to seek legal advice. He has been told by a solicitor that if he puts up a four figure sum of money he can get counsel's opinion on the merits of his case. It is, for reasons I now turn to, not an appropriate case for such an adjournment, and I decline to grant one. I proceed to consider the substance of the application for permission to appeal which Mr. Monen has been invited to develop before me.
2. On 18th January 2002 Turner J rejected a statutory appeal by Mr. Monen against the Secretary of State's decision arrived at following a public inquiry conducted by an inspector to approve the compulsory purchase by the local authority of a house owned and now lived in by Mr. Monen in Kent Road, King's Lynn. Turner J for his part had initially refused a lengthy application made by Mr. Monen for an adjournment of those proceedings before him. He concluded, in a brief and lucid judgment, that the single point of law in the case was ill-founded.
3. The single point of law was this. The ground upon which the local authority sought compulsory purchase, and upon which the inspector held it to be justified, was that the property was an eyesore, attracted vandals, was physically unsafe, was frequently vacant and had a garden that was so overgrown that it was encroaching on the public highway. This in turn had a depressing effect upon the amenity and value of neighbouring houses. The question of law was whether such facts as the inspector found were capable of justifying compulsory purchase under section 226(1)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which permits compulsory acquisition of land "required for a purpose which it is necessary to achieve in the interests of the proper planning of an area in which the land is situated".
4. The nearest case in point considered by the judge was a decision of Mr. Malcolm Spence QC, Miles v Secretary of State for the Environment (2000) JPL 192. It supported the view that the judge arrived at, encouraged as he was by section 215 of the Act, which provides:

"If it appears to the local planning authority that the amenity of a part of their area,... is adversely affected by the condition of land in their area, they may serve on the owner and occupier of the land a notice under this section."

5. The judge concluded that for these reasons the purpose identified by the Council and endorsed by the inspector was a true planning purpose within the scheme of the Act.
6. I have invited Mr. Monen to give me any reasons he can as to why that view of the law might arguably be wrong. He has not been able to do so. Indeed, he has reverted repeatedly to his need for more and more and more time. When he applied on paper for an urgent stay of Turner J's decision I refused it, along with an initial refusal of permission to appeal because, although notice to treat and notice of entry to survey had been given, there was no immediate threat of dispossession and therefore no urgency. That was less than a month ago.
7. I made it clear in my written decision that the survey and valuation could go ahead on 29th January as planned. I do not know whether that has been done, but Mr. Monen for his part tells me that he has now been galvanised into negotiating with a developer who is prepared, if he gets planning permission to build on the land, to make a purchase, and also with a builder who is prepared to come in and do the house up. I have no doubt whatever that if, even at this 11th hour, a satisfactory proposal for civilising the premises is made by Mr. Monen and is abided by, the local authority will be content to stand back. It has obligations to the public which it has pursued and is, absent some alternative satisfactory to itself, entitled to enforce. That is the situation that has been reached in the wake of Turner J's decision. There is no possible ground of appeal that I can see against it.
8. Moreover, it seems to me that it would be better for Mr Monen, as well as for everybody else, if his energy and his money were devoted, not to trying to pursue this dead-end litigation any further, but to seeing if he can redeem the situation with the local authority, clear up the premises and make the pursuit of the CPO unnecessary. I cannot say whether he will succeed. I can say that his prospects of getting something out of it are better than his prospects of getting anything out of an appeal. I think that I am probably doing him a favour by refusing both an adjournment of this application and permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.
Order: Applications refused.