Cases - Murfitt v Secretary of State for the Environment and East Cambridgeshire DC

Record details

Name

Murfitt v Secretary of State for the Environment and East Cambridgeshire DC

Date

(1980)

Citation

40 P&CR 254

Keywords

Enforcement notice

Summary

The owner of a farmyard was using it for a haulage business. He extended the area of the farmyard for parking vehicles by laying down a quantity of hardcore. More than 4 years later, the planning authority served an enforcement notice alleging a material change of use of land to use for the parking of heavy goods vehicles and requiring the land to be restored by the removal of the hardcore. The appellant claimed that the hardcore could not be required to be removed as it was operational development and so immune from enforcement action because enforcement action had not been taken within 4 years.

It was held that the enforcement notice could require the removal of the hardcore as it was part and parcel of the use of the land for parking HGVs. (The time limit for taking enforcement action in respect of a material change of use, other than change of use of a building to a single dwellinghouse, is 10 years.) Lord Justice Waller also observed that where the land is left useless, as in this case, it is logical to restore it to the condition in which it was before the unlawful use started.