Enforcement Notice in UK Law

It was in the first place contended that the Act was highly technical and as it encroached on private rights the Court must insist on strict and rigid adherence to formalities. This, as a general proposition, commands assent, and not the less because disregard of an enforcement notice is an offence involving sufficiently serious penal consequences.

The notice is invalid: it is not a nullity because on the face of it it appears to be good and it is only on proof of facts alinudo that the notice is shown to be bad: the notice is ivalid and, therefore, it may be quashed. But supposing the notice on the fact of it fails to specify some period required by sub-section ( 2) or (3). On the fact of it the notice does not comply with the section; it is a nullity and is so much waste paper.

The legislative history of section 70C demonstrates that Parliament's intention was to provide a tool to local planning authorities to prevent retrospective planning applications being used to delay enforcement action being taken against a development. Since delay is the bugbear against which the section is directed, a claimant's actual motives to use a retrospective planning application to delay matters is clearly a consideration in favour of a decision to invoke section 70C.

If, for example, the respondent had alleged that the enforcement notice had been vitiated by fraud, because one of the appellants' officers had been bribed to issue it, or had been served without the appellants' authority, he would indeed have been questioning its validity, but not on any of the grounds on which an appeal may be brought under Part V.

The question must depend entirely upon the construction of the statute under which the prosecution is brought. The statute may require the prosecution to prove that the act in question is not open to challenge on any ground available in public law, or it may be a defence to show that it is. In such a case, the justices will have to rule upon the validity of the act. In such a case, nothing but the formal validity of the act will be relevant to an issue before the justices.

Where it appears that a breach or apprehended breach will continue or occur unless and until effectively restrained by the law and that nothing short of an injunction will provide effective restraint ( City of London Corporation v Bovis Construction Ltd [1992] 3 All ER 697, 714), that will point strongly towards the grant of an injunction. But in all cases the court must decide whether in all the circumstances it is just to grant the relief sought against the particular defendant.

I accept Mr Corner's point that an enforcement notice can lawfully be issued notwithstanding that at the moment of issue the activity objected to is not going on—because it is the week-end or the factory's summer holiday, for instance. The land would still be properly described as being used for the objectionable activity. I accept that there will be borderline cases when it is not clear whether the land is being used for the objectionable activity.