Cases - Henry Boot Homes Ltd v Bassetlaw District Council
Record details
- Name
- Henry Boot Homes Ltd v Bassetlaw District Council
- Date
- [2002]; [2002]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 983; 4 PLR 108
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Planning control
- Summary
-
The appellant purchased land that had outline planning permission for housing. Some houses were built before all of the pre-conditions were complied with. It then transpired that the planning permission may have been obtained by corruption and so the local authority were considering revoking or modifying the permission in respect of part of the land that the (innocent) appellant had purchased. However, the authority confirmed that they considered the appellant's permission to be valid and indicated that the permission had been implemented. Negotiations ensued and the appellant was invited to make a new planning application for a revised scheme. A third party threatened judicial review if this was granted, and so the local authority reminded the appellant about the need to comply with the conditions. Eventually the time limit expired before all the conditions were complied with and it was contended that the permission had lapsed.
The appellant claimed that it had a 'legitimate expectation' that the local authority would treat the development as having commenced before the time limit had expired because it had indicated that planning permission had been implemented. It also claimed that the authority had power to waive compliance with conditions. The Court of Appeal held that the scope for waiver by non-statutory means must be 'very limited' now that section 73 provides a statutory procedure engaging the public. For similar reasons, legitimate expectation will only arise in exceptional circumstances because cases where there is no third party or public interest in a planning decision will be very rare. In the circumstances, no legitimate expectation arose.
The Court of Appeal was not prepared to state that legitimate expectation could never operate so as to enable a developer to begin development in breach of condition. In circumstances where there is no third party or public interest in the matter it is possible that a legitimate expectation might arise. But 'such cases will be very rare'.