Cases - Burdle v Secretary of State for the Environment

Record details

Name
Burdle v Secretary of State for the Environment
Date
[1972]
Citation
3 AII ER 240
Keywords
Planning control
Summary

Mr Justice Bridge said:

'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 in substance to a separate use both physically and functionally.'

The case concerned a scrap-yard on which stood a dwellinghouse. Attached to the house was a lean-to annexe. The lean-to had been used as an office in connection with the scrap business and incidental sales of car parts. The appellant started using the lean-to for the substantial retail sale of brand new vehicle parts. The planning authority served an enforcement notice alleging a material change of use.

The main issue before the Divisional Court was whether the planning unit was the lean-to or the whole of the site. The Secretary of State had held that, as a shop is a building, the word 'premises' in the enforcement notice must relate to the lean-to only. The Court disagreed. Mr Justice Bridge said:

'... what I cannot accept is that the accident of language which the planning authority choose to use in framing their enforcement notice can determine conclusively what is the appropriate planning unit ...'

He then sketched out 3 broad categories of distinction to help to determine the planning unit.

  1. Where the occupier pursues a single main purpose to which secondary activities are incidental or ancillary, the whole unit of occupation should be considered to be the planning unit.
  2. Where there are a variety of activities none of which are incidental or ancillary to another and which are not confined within separate and physically distinct areas of land, again the whole unit of occupation should normally be the planning unit. (This is usually said to be a composite use.)
  3. Where within a single unit of occupation there are two or more physically separate and distinct areas occupied for substantially different and unrelated purposes, each area (together with its incidental and ancillary activities) should be a separate planning unit.