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.

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.