Unlawful Occupation of Green Belt Land
Eight members of the gypsy community (as they described themselves) appealed from committal orders made on 12 February 2021 by a Deputy High Court Judge: Basildon District Council v Charles Anderson & Ors [2021] EWCA Civ 363 Peter Jackson, Newey, Warby LJJ.
They were each sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment (suspended for 12 months) ranging from four to eight months on conditions which included removing from land any static caravans, mobile homes and touring caravans, not to bring any such item on to the land or allow any person to occupy the land, and removing all works undertaken in relation to their respective plots by a given date.
The land concerned was in the Metropolitan Green Belt in Wickford, Essex, and there had been a long history of attempts to develop it for use as a gypsy/traveller caravan site which the Respondent had restrained by injunctions and enforcement stop notices.
On 9 December 2020 Foxton J found there to be a serious issue as to a deliberate and flagrant breach of planning controls.
The rapid and coordinated nature of work begun on a Saturday, suggested an attempt to achieve a fait accompli before anticipated legal countermeasures might be deployed.
Having considered the impact of the injunction on the Appellants[1], the Judge accepted that being forced to leave the land involved prejudice to them, but little weight could be given to a state of occupation that had been achieved in deliberate contravention of the Council’s notices and the Court’s orders.
The orders were continued and a power of arrest was included in light of the history.
Permission to appeal was refused on 14 December 2020.
The Appellants did not obey the orders. They did not remove any static caravans, mobile homes and touring caravans by the date contained in the orders of two Judges.
Instead they carried on with further works and in some cases brought more dwellings and vehicles onto the land.
The Council issued applications for committal. The Deputy Judge accepted that it was not easy to envisage a more flagrant and coordinated breach of planning control by a group of individuals acting in concert on previously undeveloped Green Belt land, that there had been a complete failure to comply with the orders, and that the circumstances in which further works had taken place aggravated the position.
He thereupon imposed the suspended sentences and conditions referred to above.
An application to vary the orders so as to permit them to remain living on their land pending a full determination of the injunction proceedings and planning permissions was thereafter dismissed.
Giving the Court’s unanimous decision to dismiss the appeal, Peter Jackson LJ said that the orders were an entirely proper response to the Appellants’ calculated disobedience of the court’s orders against a background of serious, wholesale defiance of the planning laws.
The sentences passed were the least that the Judge could reasonably have imposed in the circumstances and his decision to suspend was more than fair. There was nothing of substance in any of the grounds of appeal.
Having shown so little regard for the law in other respects, the Appellants now claimed to be troubled by their obligations to obey the Covid Regulations, although they had a reasonable excuse for moving off the land in compliance with a court order.
That was just another strategy for staying on the land as long as possible. The Regulations were in force when they moved onto the land, but they moved onto the land anyhow.
The times for compliance were varied to 12 noon on Monday 22 March 2021 to remove items from the land and to 10 April 2021 to remove all works undertaken in relation to their respective plots.
The proceedings had now run their course. Any further application to vary the order would surely be treated as ‘successive’ applications and be dismissed without ceremony[2], and any further application to the court below or to the Court of Appeal for another stay would surely be refused.
[1] South Buckinghamshire District Council v Porter [2003] 2 AC 558
[2] Woodhouse v Consignia PLC [2002] EWCA Civ 275