Cases - Jones v Secretary of State for the Environment

Record details

Name
Jones v Secretary of State for the Environment
Date
(1974)
Citation
28 P&CR 362
Keywords
Planning control
Summary

A site had been used for a road haulage business. Trailers had been manufactured on site for use in connection with the business. The haulage business was sold and the site became used mainly for the large-scale manufacture of trailers for sale. The local planning authority served an enforcement notice requiring the manufacture of trailers to cease. The appellant claimed, following Lewis, that the activity was the same, and it could not make any difference from a planning point of view that in one instance the trailers were made for use by the maker, and in another they were being made for sale.

The Divisional Court disagreed and distinguished the Lewis case. This was not the case of a primary use surviving with a mere change in the personality of the user. Lord Widgery CJ observed that there was a change from a haulage use with ancillary trailer manufacture, to a new primary use of trailer manufacture.