Remediation in UK Law

Secondly, as Green Belt policies NPPF 89 and 90 demonstrate, considerations of appropriateness, preservation of openness and conflict with Green Belt purposes are not exclusively dependent on the size of building or structures but include their purpose. The Green Belt may not be harmed necessarily by one but is harmed necessarily by another. These concepts are to be applied, in the light of the nature of a particular type of development.

And, contrary to Ms Sheikh's submission, the "juridical basis" for it is not obscure. It has been recognized in jurisprudence extending back at least to the Divisional Court's decision in Murfitt, and has been consistently applied by the courts since that decision. It does not, and cannot, distort the operation of the time limits in section 171B, or widen the reach of the requirements provided for in section 173(3) and (4) beyond the bounds set for them in those provisions.

It is that an enforcement notice directed at a breach of planning control by the making of an unauthorized material change of use may lawfully require the land or building in question to be restored to its condition before that change of use took place, by the removal of associated works as well as the cessation of the use itself – provided that the works concerned are integral to or part and parcel of the unauthorized use.

I do not think any of that reasoning can be said to displace the principle applied by the Divisional Court in Murfitt, and subsequently recognized in the cases to which I have referred.

It is a wide power of correction, a generously expressed slip rule, it is not a power which can properly be used to attack the substance of an enforcement notice. If the recipient of the notice wishes to achieve that result he can do so by appealing on the grounds set out in section 174(2)(a) and pursuing the deemed application for planning permission under section 177.

The fact of the matter is that there are no "precise provisions" governing the management of waste which escapes unintentionally from the sewerage system. Accordingly they are not "covered by other legislation" in the sense explained by the ECJ. That may not be surprising, since the escapes are by definition unplanned, and therefore outside the scope of the ordinary management regime.

The third is that the abstraction licence limited the purposes for which the extracted water could be used to the "domestic and industrial purposes" of the undertaking carried on by Plc at the site shown on the plan attached to the licence (in effect the tannery works) with the result that, even if it had been able and willing to do so, Plc could not lawfully extract water in excess of what it was able to use in its tanning process.