Az v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | His Honour Judge Anthony Thornton QC |
| Judgment Date | 20 December 2012 |
| Neutral Citation | [2012] EWHC 3660 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 20 December 2012 |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/55/2011 |
[2012] EWHC 3660 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
His Honour Judge Anthony Thornton Qc
Sitting As A Judge Of The High Court
Case No: CO/55/2011
Michael Rudd (instructed by Bramwell Browne Odedra) for the Applicant
Miss Lisa Busch (instructed by The Treasury Solicitor) for the First Respondent
The Second Respondent did not appear and was not represented
A. Anonymity order
Although this judgment is concerned with an application under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 ("TCPA") that is made in relation to a planning appeal made under section 78 of the TCPA, it involves a detailed discussion of the personal details of the personal circumstances of three adults and a child now aged 13 and of their family, private and home lives. These family members are the applicant, his wife, his son who is his wife's step-son, and his sister-in-law, being his wife's sister. Any court has the power in cases involving children, in whatever sphere the case is concerned, to anonymise the names of a child party or a child who is directly involved in the case that that court is concerned with so that he or she cannot be identified and to similarly anonymise the names of any other party or witness who, by being named in the case, will enable that child to be identified. There is no reason for not adopting the same practice in this application and, although anonymity has not been requested, I am exercising my power to direct anonymity. Since the child will be readily identifiable if his father, the applicant, is named, I am also directing anonymity of the applicant, his wife and his wife's sister. The applicant will be known for all purposes connected with these proceedings as "AZ".
I am making this order because it is not in the best interests of this child to have him publicly named or to be identifiable by anyone reading this judgment or any report of it as can be seen from a reading of the factual background to the issues that arise for decision. This anonymity is necessary in order to pay due respect to his rights to a private and family life. It is for this reason that AZ, his wife, his son and his sister-in-law referred to throughout the judgment as the applicant, the applicant's wife and the applicant's son and the applicant's sister-in-law.
I am making this order in the exercise of my powers under CPR 39.2(4) and Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and in the exercise of my duty to pay due respect to the private life of the applicant's son provided for by section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (" HRA") and article 8(1) of European Convention of Human Rights ("HCRA"). In adopting this course, I have relied on the decision of the House of Lords in In re S (A Child) (Identification: Restrictions on Publication)http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/redirect.cgi?path=/uk/cases/UKHL/2004/47.html and of the Supreme Court in Guardian News and Media & Ors, Re HM Treasury v Ahmed & Ors.
I am, therefore, in conformity with normal practice when an anonymity order is made in respect of a child, making the following direction:
(1) The applicant is to be named and known as AZ for all purposes in connection with this judgment and these proceedings.
(2) No newspaper report of the proceedings shall reveal the name, address or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead to the identification, of the child concerned in this application or in the planning appeal from which this application is brought, either as being one of the persons by or in respect of whom the planning appeal was brought or this application is made or as being a witness or providing evidence to the planning appeal or that is referred to in this application.
(3) No picture shall be published in any newspaper as being or including a picture of any child or young person so concerned in the proceedings as aforesaid; except in so far (if at all) as may be permitted by the direction of the court.
(4) This order extends to any subsequent hearing or inquiry held in connection with the planning appeal which this order relates to and which results from the quashing of the decision previously made that has been ordered as a result of the judgment in this application.
B. Introduction
This is an application brought under section 288 of TCPA. The applicant seeks to question the decision of an inspector appointed by the first respondent, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government ("the Secretary of State"), dismissing the applicant's appeal under section 78 of the TCPA. This decision was dated 19 November 2010. The appeal had been brought by the applicant against the failure of the second respondent, South Gloucestershire District Council ("SGDC"), to give notice within the prescribed period of a decision on his application for planning permission for the stationing for residential purposes of a mobile home in an open field in the green belt located approximately one mile north of P in South Gloucestershire. In other words, the applicant seeks to question the inspector's refusal to grant him planning permission to place his mobile home on his field in the green belt and to use it to live in as his home with his young son
The decision was made following a hearing at which the applicant was represented by a non-legally qualified planning consultant and SGDC by one of its planning officers. The applicant questions the appeal decision on the grounds that amount to complaints that the inspector did not comply with relevant requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Hearings Procedure) (England) Rules 2002 ("the Hearings Rules"), the Human Rights Act (" HRA") and the law and policy relating to the granting of permission subject to conditions. In short, the applicant questions the inspector's refusal to grant either planning permission or a temporary planning permission for his mobile home on a green belt site as resulting from a failure to comply with various relevant requirements that it was required to comply with.
C. The background facts
Source of the background facts. The inspector's decision does not summarise the relevant factual background to the applicant's human rights claim in any detail. Moreover, neither the applicant's hearing statement nor the list of major issues that were or should have been identified by the inspector were included in the application bundle. However, three detailed consultant forensic psychiatric reports that were concerned with the applicant's psychiatric and psychological conditions were supplied to the inspector for the appeal hearing and copies were provided in the application bundle. I have obtained my summary of the factual background from the contents of these reports in addition to the inspector's decision since the inspector accepted the conclusions reached by the report writers in these reports which were based on the factual background recorded in detail in them.
The first of these reports was dated 9 March 2004. It had been prepared by Dr Mason on the instructions of the applicant's then solicitor to assess the applicant in connection with the claim that he had started against the operators of the care home in Penarth where he had resided for about 9 months many years previously when he was 12 years old. This report contained considerable detail about his life up to 2004. The other two reports, dated 3 February 2009 and 21 October 2010 respectively, were prepared by a different psychiatrist, Dr Reeves. The first was for use in connection with the applicant's plea in mitigation following his conviction in a criminal case in 2009 and the second, which was to be read with the first, was for use in the appeal hearing in 2010 that I am now concerned with. These two reports complimented Dr Mason's report and provided further details of the factual background up to the date of the second report.
All three reports are consistent with each other and they collectively provide considerable detail of the applicant's life and that of his wife and son as well as full assessments of his psychiatric and psychological conditions, none of which the inspector queried in her decision. That is why I have taken my summary of the factual background to both the appeal and this application from these reports. I have also relied, for the planning history of the appeal site, on the hearing statement of the applicant's representative that was used at the hearing and which was also contained in the application bundle.
The applicant. The applicant was born on 4 March 1957 and, at the date of the inspector's hearing, he was 53. His early years appear to have been uneventful with no unhappy memories. However, others appear to have taken a different view since he was subsequently assessed at the age of 12 as being emotionally inadequate and insecure, possibly it was suggested as a maladjusted response to a combination of familial rejection, overindulgence and frequent changes of home which included periods when the family were living in a mobile home. It would also seem that he witnessed, and was himself subjected to, frequent bouts of domestic strife and violence.
When he was 11, he fractured his skull and was in hospital for a lengthy period and the resulting injury left him with typical symptoms of post-concussional syndrome with headaches, memory loss, irritability and dizziness. He was bullied when he started secondary...
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