Chelmsford City Council v Leisure Parks Real Estate (Holdings) Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Linden |
| Judgment Date | 22 June 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 1978 (QB) |
| Docket Number | No. QB-2017-007303 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
[2021] EWHC 1978 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Linden
No. QB-2017-007303
Mr J Cannon (instructed by Chelmsford City Council) appeared on behalf of the Claimant.
Mr M Rudd (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard) appeared on behalf of the First to Fourth Defendants.
THE FIFTH DEFENDANTS did not attend and were not represented.
(Via Microsoft TEAMs)
Introduction
By notice dated 25 February 2021, the claimant applied to commit the defendants for contempt of court, or alternatively a lesser penalty, for breach of an injunction ordered by Andrews J, as she then was, on 23 January 2017, pursuant to s.117B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. I will refer to Andrews J's order as “the Order.”
This is the hearing of that application. Mr Josef Cannon appeared on behalf of the claimant and Mr Michael Rudd appeared for the defendants, and I am grateful to them both, and indeed to the parties, for the constructive way in which they have approached this hearing.
The claimant's application was listed to be heard on 21 April 2021 but was adjourned to allow for further evidence to be prepared. As a result of further exchanges between the parties, they have reached agreement in relation to a number of matters:
(a) The application against the third and fifth defendants is not pursued by the claimant and can therefore be dismissed as against them. Where I refer to “the defendants”, I therefore mean the first, second and fourth defendants.
(b) The Order is to be varied so that it does not apply to the fifth defendants. In effect, therefore, the injunction against them is to be discharged.
(c) There is an agreed schedule of facts and breaches of the Order by the first, second and fourth defendants.
(d) The defendants have agreed to pay costs in the sum of £20,000.
(e) The defendants are content for me to sentence them accordingly.
In the course of today's hearing, the defendants have also given an undertaking that I will come to in due course.
The evidence
With its application, the claimant submitted two affidavits made by Mr James Stubbs, the planning enforcement manager of the claimant, dated 12 February and 13 May 2021. These set out the case against the defendants. The defendants provided witness statements in two tranches:
a. Firstly, witness statements dated 19 April 2021 for each of the second to fourth defendants, who are all directors of the first defendant. There were also witness statements for Ms Michelle Ryder (the manager of Hayes Country Park), for Mr Clinton Wood (a building contractor), and for Mr Matthew Green of Green Planning Studio Limited.
b. Secondly, responsive witness statements dated 25 May 2021 were served, those witness statements being made by the second defendant and Mr Green.
These statements contained a good deal more detail than I intend to set out in my judgment, but I read them carefully in preparing for this hearing and took them into account in coming to my decision.
The Hearing
At the beginning of the hearing I enquired of counsel as to whether either party wished to call or cross-examine any witness and was told that neither party wished to do so.
Mr Cannon then briefly summarised the case against the defendants and dealt with questions from the court. Mr Rudd then responded and made pleas in mitigation on the defendants' behalf.
The Background
The claimant is the relevant local planning authority for present purposes. The first defendant is the owner and operator of four mobile home parks, the relevant one for present purposes being Hayes Country Park, which is on a site in Wickford in Essex. As I have indicated, the second and fourth defendants are directors of the first defendant, and they are shareholders of that company.
The majority of the site is licensed for 390 mobile homes. I understand that in fact there are around 307 on site and that many of the occupants of the mobile homes are elderly or vulnerable people.
Part of the Hayes Country Park is a strip of land which runs along its northern boundary (“the Land”). The Land is within the metropolitan greenbelt and there is no planning permission for its use. It is designated agricultural land and local and national planning policies have deemed any other use of the land to be inappropriate and harmful. The first defendant is therefore not permitted to place caravans or mobile homes or any of the infrastructure connected with such units on this area.
The Order was made in the context of an application by the first defendant for planning permission to use the protected area as part of the caravan site. That application was made in November 2016 after preparations for the use of the land for these purposes had already begun and had then continued despite the defendants being told that they did not have permission to do so and should desist. The aim of the Order was to prevent continuing breaches of planning control by the first defendant, pending the outcome of its application for planning permission.
The Order was by consent and it continued an order which had been made by Soole J on 11 January 2017. It was in these terms:
(a) The protected area was referred to in the Order as “The Land”.
(b) The Land was defined as follows, “Land known as land adjoining Hayes Farm Caravan Park, Hayes Chase, Battlesbridge, Wickford, Essex, and outlined in red on the attached plan.”
(c) Under paragraph.1 of the Order, the defendants were forbidden:
“…whether by themselves (separately or together) or by instructing or encouraging or permitting any other person, from:
a. bringing (or causing or allowing to be brought) onto the Land any mobile home, caravan or any other form of residential accommodation without the written consent of the Claimant;
b. carrying out (or causing or allowing to be carried out) any further development on the Land without leave of the Court;
until trial or further order of the court.”
(d) There was then attached to the Order a plan which marked out the protected area by use of a red line.
The first defendant's application for planning permission was refused on 13 February 2017. This decision was appealed, and the appeal was rejected on 15 January 2018. The planning inspector cited the harm caused by the development and awarded costs against the defendants on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.
On 18 June 2018 an enforcement notice was served, requiring the removal of mobile homes stationed on the Land as well as the associated works which had been carried out on the Land to facilitate its use as a mobile home site. That enforcement notice was appealed by the defendants, but the notice was upheld on 1 May 2019 with certain amendments and an extension of time for compliance.
On 13 May 2019, Mr Stubbs then wrote to the first defendant setting out a series of deadlines for the different stages of compliance with the enforcement notice, with the date for full restoration of the Land specified as 28 February 2020. The defendants did not comply with this timetable, and the exchanges in relation to this matter and the question of compliance with the Order continued over the course of 2020 and into 2021.
As far as compliance with the Order is concerned, unfortunately, for reasons which I need not go into in any detail, the precise boundary between the Land and the part of the mobile home site where it was permitted to station mobile homes was not as clear as the parties may have thought at the time of the Order. It is now agreed that prior to 26 June (the defendants say on 25 June) 2019, there was a meeting between Mr Stubbs and Mr Chitty of the claimant on the one hand and Mr Wood and the second and fourth defendants on the other, at which a line was painted in red on the ground which all parties believed at the time to indicate the boundary between the protected strip of land and the rest of the site.
Acting on this mistaken belief, between September 2019 and 23 December 2019, the defendants caused or permitted eleven mobile homes to be stationed wholly or partly on the Land. I understand that these homes are generally fairly large: on most cases in the order of 45 feet by 14 feet. They are truly the homes of the residents and they require a concrete hardstanding rather than being placed on grass. They typically include a patio and, of course infrastructure is required to provide the general utilities to the...
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