Cases - Kensington and Chelsea Royal Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and Mia Carla Ltd

Record details

Name

Kensington and Chelsea Royal Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and Mia Carla Ltd

Date

[1981]

Citation

JPL 50

Keywords

Planning control

Summary

The appellant owned a restaurant on the ground floor of a building. He began to use the adjacent garden for the purposes of the restaurant. The planning authority served an enforcement notice alleging a material change of use from garden to restaurant. However, this notice was based on the false assumption that the garden was part of the residential accommodation above the restaurant. In fact it belonged to the same planning unit as the restaurant, so the notice should have alleged intensification. (Today the notice could be amended.) In commenting on the drafting of enforcement notices concerned with intensification, Lord Justice Donaldson said that the word 'intensification' should be used with very considerable circumspection as intensification which did not amount to a material change of use was mere intensification and outside planning control.