Local Authority in UK Law

The local authority charged with the administration of local government in a local government area consists of an elected council which A local authority, although democratically elected and representative of the area, is not a sovereign body and can only do such things as are expressly or impliedly authorised by Parliament. Accordingly Parliament has conferred on a local authority controlled power to borrow short-term and long-term.

The authorities also show that a power is not incidental merely because it is convenient or desirable or profitable. Individual trading corporations and others may speculate as much as they please or consider prudent. But a local authority is not a trading or currency or commercial operator with no limit on the method or extent of its borrowing or with powers to speculate. The local authority is a public authority dealing with public moneys, exercising powers limited by Schedule 13.

If there is one principle of planning law more firmly settled than any other, it is that matters of planning judgment are within the exclusive province of the local planning authority or the Secretary of State.

He is merely seeking to defend proceedings brought against him by the appellants. In so doing he is seeking only to exercise the ordinary right of any individual to defend an action against him on the ground that he is not liable for the whole sum claimed by the plaintiff. Moreover he puts forward his defence as a matter of right, whereas in an application for judicial review, success would require an exercise of the court's discretion in his favour.

But, with respect to the judge, I do not agree that the low-level agricultural activities must be regarded as having been inconsistent with use for sports and pastimes for the purposes of section 22 if in practice they were not. Nor do I follow how the fact that, upon registration, the land would become subject to the 1857 and 1876 Acts can be relevant to the question of whether there has been the requisite user by local inhabitants for upwards of 20 years before the date of the application.

The use of the word "solely" makes it clear that only the able bodied destitute are excluded from the powers and duties of section 21(1)(a). The infirm destitute remain within. Their need for care and attention arises because they are infirm as well as because they are destitute. They would need care and attention even if they were wealthy. They would not of course need accommodation, but that is not where section 21(1A) draws the line.

Personal circumstances of an occupier, personal hardship, the difficulties of businesses which are of value to the character of a community are not to be ignored in the administration of planning control. It would be inhuman pedantry to exclude from the control of our environment the human factor. But such circumstances, when they arise, fall to be considered not as a general rule but as exceptions to a general rule to be met in special cases.