Cases - Jarmain v Secretary of State for the Environment Transport and the Regions
Record details
- Name
- Jarmain v Secretary of State for the Environment Transport and the Regions
- Date
- [2000]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 126
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Enforcement notice - breach of condition
- Summary
-
Planning permission was granted for a mobile home subject to a condition that the permission expired on 31 March 1995. By April 1993 physical alterations had been undertaken that converted the mobile home into a permanent single-storey building. In March 1996 the local planning authority served an enforcement notice alleging a breach of the time condition and requiring the removal of the mobile home. In March 1998 the authority withdrew that notice and served a second notice alleging erection of a building without planning permission. The appellant claimed that the second notice was out of time (4 years had elapsed) and the authority could not invoke section 171B(4)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to take further enforcement action within 4 years of the first notice because the breach in the second notice (erection of a building) was not the same as the first (breach of condition).
The Court of Appeal held that the second notice related to the same facts as constituted the breach in the first notice and so section 171B(4)(b) applied. To hold otherwise would be to return to the days when an appellant could succeed in challenging enforcement notices on arid technicalities.