Cases - Hammond v Secretary of State for the Environment and Maldon District Council

Record details

Name

Hammond v Secretary of State for the Environment and Maldon District Council

Date

[1997]

Citation

JPL 724

Legislation

• Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995
• Town and Country Planning Act 1990

Keywords

Planning control - Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 - Town and Country Planning Act 1990

Summary

The appellant used a caravan for accommodation while he undertook work on the erection of a dwelling. (A planning inspector had held that this accommodation use was permitted under the GPDO.) After the dwelling was built, the appellant's daughter lived in the caravan.

An enforcement notice alleged that the breach was 'the stationing of a mobile home'. It had been established in Wealden District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment that stationing a caravan on agricultural land was not development where the caravan was ancillary to the agricultural use. So the inspector corrected the allegation in the notice to 'the stationing of a mobile home for the purpose of human habitation'.

The Court of Appeal upheld the correction. The appellant knew perfectly well what the mobile home was being used for and what the local authority was complaining about. Lord Justice Brooke completely agreed with Mr Justice Roch in R v Secretary of State for the Environment, ex parte Ahern that the pettifogging has stopped and the 1990 Act can be read so that when it says the Secretary of State can correct any defect, if it can be made without injustice, it means exactly that.

The Court of Appeal disagreed. If the land becomes used for a purpose not within the GPDO then, prima facie, development will have occurred. Therefore, in this case, the purpose of its presence on the land reverted to being a purpose for use as human habitation, which was not protected by the GPDO and was alien to the permitted agricultural use of the land.