Cases - Prengate Properties v Secretary of State for the Environment

Record details

Name

Prengate Properties v Secretary of State for the Environment

Date

(1973)

Citation

25 P&CR 311

Keywords

Planning control

Summary

The appellants built a wall surrounding half the perimeter of a house. The house was on a raised level. They began to import soil with a view to providing new terracing and with the intention of using the wall as a retaining wall for the additional soil. The local planning authority served an enforcement notice requiring the removal of the soil and the wall. At the date of the notice there was not sufficient soil for the wall to be acting as a retaining wall.

Lord Widgery CJ said that the situation must be examined at the date of the enforcement notice. At this date the wall had not been incorporated into a larger operation. Although the owner may have intended to incorporate it, his intention is not necessarily conclusive. So at the relevant time the wall was authorised.

Lord Widgery also observed that if an enclosing wall subsequently becomes a retaining wall, it does not lose its permitted development rights merely because it has some function of retaining the soil as well.

Lord Widgery CJ said that the permission:

'would not extend to someone who places a free standing wall in the middle of his garden in circumstances in which the wall neither encloses nor plays any part in the enclosure of anything.'