Cases - Rann v Secretary of State for the Environment and Thanet District Council

Record details

Name
Rann v Secretary of State for the Environment and Thanet District Council
Date
[1980]; [1979]; (1979)
Citation
1 EGLR 139; 40 P&CR 113; 254 EG 1095
Legislation
Keywords
Planning control - Use Classes Order 1972
Summary

Mr and Mrs Rann owned a three-storey building that had planning permission as a hotel/guesthouse (Class XI of the Use Classes Order 1972). They began to use it for holiday accommodation for mentally handicapped people. The local planning authority claimed that this was a change of use to Class XIV and served an enforcement notice. Class XIV was: 'use as a home or institution providing for the boarding, care and maintenance of children, old people or persons under a disability, a convalescent home, a nursing home or a hospital'. The Secretary of State upheld the notice, so the Ranns appealed to the High Court on the ground that the use did not fall within Class XIV.

In his decision, Sir Douglas Frank QC observed that the Use Classes Order was being borrowed for a purpose for which it was not intended. Its purpose is not to define certain kinds of development, but to put outside the ambit of development a change of use within the same use class. He went on to conclude that the Ranns' use was not within Class XIV (because the word 'home' connotes permanence) but it did not necessarily follow that it was within Class XI. However, he did not have to decide this point.