QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court
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WILLIAM NEWLAND |
Claimant/ Appellant |
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- and - |
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SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMUNITIES & LOCAL GOVERNMENT WAVERLEY BOROUGH COUNCIL |
Defendants/ Respondents |
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for the Claimant/Appellant
James Strachan (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) for the First Defendant/Respondent
Hearing date: 24 November 2008
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Crown Copyright ©
HIS HONOUR JUDGE HICKINBOTTOM:
Introduction
Factual Background
i) In 1986, the site was granted planning permission for use as a caravan site for one caravan. Although by condition the permission required the position of the caravan to be agreed with the planning authority, it was common ground between the parties (and accepted by the Inspector) that it did not thereafter require the caravan to be retained in the agreed position. It could be sited anywhere on the site.ii) Following the grant of permission, a caravan was stationed on the site and Mr Newland and his family lived in it. However, the Inspector found that, as a consequence of alterations and additions, in 1999 Mr Newland's home ceased being a caravan and became a building appropriately described as a dwelling house. Mr Newland does not agree with that finding but (in my view, rightly) he accepts that it was within the proper judgment of the Inspector to make that finding and it is unchallengeable.
iii) It was common ground that, prior to 1999, the site was a single planning unit with use as a caravan site for one caravan. The Inspector found that, after 1999, the site comprised a single planning unit with the use as a single dwelling house with ancillary garden and paddock. That is a vital finding to which I shall return (Paragraph 23 and following). Chiming with it, and in the light of the discussion concerning whether Mr Newland's home had become a dwelling house, during the course of the inquiry before the Inspector, the Council successfully sought to have the breach in Notice 1 amended to:
"Without planning permission, change of use of the land from use as a single dwelling house with ancillary garden and paddock to a mixed use as a single dwelling house with ancillary garden and paddock and as a caravan site for the stationing of caravans for residential purposes."iv) Mr Newland's family members visited the site with their own caravans from time-to-time. However, the Inspector found that these visits were intermittent and, prior to the use for stationing caravans for residential purposes that was the subject of Notice 1, no lawful use of the site had been established arising from the presence of other residentially occupied caravans.
The Relevant Statutory Provisions
"(i) the carrying out of building, engineering, mining or other operations in, on, over or under land; or
(ii) the making of any material change of use of any buildings or other land."
"(d) The use of any buildings or other land within the curtilage of a dwelling house for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of the dwelling house as such".
"In determining for the purposes of sub-sections (2) and (3) what is or was the normal use of land, no account should be taken of any use begun in contravention of this Part or of previous planning control."
"Where an enforcement notice has been issued in respect of any development of land, planning permission is not required for its use for the purpose for which (in accordance with the provisions of this part of this Act) it could lawfully have been used if that development had not been carried out."
i) Section 57(4) is not subject to the provisions of Section 57(5). There is no requirement to obtain planning permission to resume a former lawful use of land where there has been successful enforcement action against a subsequent unlawful material change of use. The landowner is entitled to revert to the lawful use that ceased when he embarked on the unlawful use.ii) However, following enforcement action, the only use that can be made of the land without obtaining fresh planning permission is the use for which the land could have been used immediately before the use of which complaint is made in the enforcement notice. Reversion is only allowed to the use which was current immediately before the development which is the subject of the enforcement notice, and then only if that use was lawful (Young v Secretary of State for the Environment [1983] 2 AC 662 at page 670F-G).
iii) Where there has been a material change from a use which has become immune from enforcement action and is consequently lawful, then a change back to that use will be a further material change requiring planning permission. There is no continuing right to take up the immune use again. If there is enforcement action in relation to the later use, then Section 57(4) may mean that there can be reversion to the immune use (if it immediately preceded the unlawful use against which action was taken): but if the reversion is voluntary, the planning authority can serve an enforcement notice in respect of that change. The right will have been "lost" by the virtue of the intervening use (R (Fairstate Ltd) v First Secretary of State [2004] EWHC 1807 (Admin) at [19] and [28]-[29] per Sullivan J, as approved by the Court of Appeal [2005] EWCA Civ 283).
The Grounds of Challenge
i) The Notice 1 Ground: The Inspector, having found that Mr Newland's dwelling is now (and has been since 1999) a dwelling house building, erred in proceeding to find that the rest of the site had a lawful use as a garden or paddock. He fell into error in finding that there had been a material change of use in relation to the site other than the dwelling house building itself: it is submitted on Mr Newland's behalf that the use for the rest of the site continued to be as a caravan site pursuant to the 1986 permission. Alternatively, if there had been a change of use since 1999, it was in respect of that part of the site which did not fall into the definition of "buildings" and therefore would not achieve lawful status after four years, but rather ten (Section 171B(2) and (3) above). As the change had taken place within the last ten years, in respect of that land Mr Newland could avail himself of Section 57(4) of the Act and revert to the previous lawful use, i.e. as a caravan site. Although it also bears upon Notice 2, this ground is focussed on Notice 1.ii) The Notice 2 Ground: In relation to Notice 2, the Inspector failed to carry out any proper, discrete assessment of the development which was the subject of that notice.
The Notice 1 Ground
i) Section 171B(2) only applies to "buildings" and cannot, as a matter of law, apply to the land outside the footprint of the dwelling house ("the wider site"), although use of the curtilage falls within Section 55(2)(d) and is made lawful by that separate provision. The "four year" provision of Section 171B(2) only applies to buildings (in this case, only to the dwelling house): the ten year period of Section 171B(3) applied to the remainder of the site. Ten years not having lapsed since the date of the breach, any change of use in 1999 could not yet be immune from enforcement action and therefore lawful.ii) To determine the lawful use of the wider site, the Inspector would have to consider whether there had been a material change in use since 1999. It was submitted on behalf of Mr Newland that there had been none. The wider site was used, both before and after 1999, in the same way, as a caravan site. On the evidence, it was submitted that the Inspector's finding that the use of the wider site had changed was not only wrong, it was perverse.
iii) But in any event, if and insofar as there had been any change of use in respect of the wider site in that period, once enforcement proceedings had been taken, Mr Newland could avail himself of Section 57(4) and revert to the previous lawful use, namely as a caravan site.
"First, whenever it is possible to recognise a single main purpose of the occupier's use of his land to which secondary activities are incidental or ancillary, the whole unit should be considered…
But, secondly, it may equally be apt to consider the entire unit of occupation even though the occupier carries on a variety of activities and it is not possible to say that one is incidental or ancillary to another…
Thirdly, however, it may frequently occur that, within a single unit of occupation, two or more physically separate and distinct areas are occupied for substantially different and unrelated purposes [and] in such a case each area used for a different main purpose (together with its incidental and ancillary activities) ought to be considered as a separate planning unit"."
Into which category a particular set of circumstances falls, Bridge LJ said:
"Like the question of material change, it must be a question of fact and degree."
However:
"It may be a useful working rule to assume that the unit of occupation is the appropriate planning unit, unless and until some smaller unit can be recognised as the site of activities which amount tin substance to a separate use both physically and functionally."
The Notice 2 Ground
"34. The Inspector does not seem to have directly considered the impact of the two garage buildings either individually or together on the character of the landscape, nor taken (in the light of his finding that the site has lawful uses as a dwelling house and ancillary land) of the permitted development rights which thereby accrue to buildings on land which has permission as land ancillary to a dwelling house.
35. His assessment simply fails to carry out any assessment of the development which is the subject of the deemed application under ground (a)."
Conclusion