Council in legal battle to stop building on unauthorised caravan site

The council is embroiled in an ongoing legal battle to attempt to protect a caravan site on the greenbelt from being developed any further – having never authorised this in the first place.

Fourteen people – including six children – are pitched up on greenbelt land in Fifield at the junction of Fifield Lane and Oakley Green Road.

Works had been undertaken there to create a hard surface, divide the land into four pitches and bring in mobile homes.

Planning permission wasn’t granted for this, and RBWM took the case to court earlier this year.

The council does not seek to remove what’s been built, nor displace the people living there – but it does want to stop any further unauthorised development and occupation.

Of particular concern to the borough is that works continued even after a temporary stop notice was issued – a planning enforcement tool used to immediately halt suspected unlawful development.

Despite the notice, four mobile homes, three motorhomes and a touring caravan were brought onto the land.

The council says this is a serious breach of planning control, especially because the site is in the greenbelt.

As such, it asked the High Court to intervene – and an interim injunction was granted in January, temporarily forbidding any further development.

An injunction is often more powerful than a normal planning enforcement notice because breaching it is contempt of court, not just a planning offence.

This was done ‘without notice’, meaning the court made the order without first telling the defendants or hearing their side.

The idea was to place an immediate halt on development and preserve the site’s current state while the High Court considered the case for a ‘final’ injunction – a longer-term order stopping development.

But the owner of the site and people living there fought back against the final injunction.

The defendants do not dispute that planning permission is currently absent but argue it was too early for a final injunction.

They said the council had not fully considered the personal circumstances of the people living there – and they should wait for the outcome of a pending planning application.

Presiding judge Duncan Atkinson KC agreed there had clearly been unauthorised development and a breach of planning control.

However, he took careful note of harm caused and the human right to a home.

“The hardship likely to be caused to a defendant by … an injunction … will always be relevant to the court’s decision,” he said.

“In many cases, the hardship … will be of sufficient weight to counterbalance a continued and persistent breach of planning control.”

Courts must consider any conflict between planning enforcement and Article 8 rights – the right to a home.

But the court will be ‘slow’ to grant protection to those who establish a home on an environmentally protected site ‘in conscious defiance of the law.’

To do otherwise ‘would encourage illegal action’ to the detriment of the community.

The judge also considered the presence of children; the best interests of a child are ‘integral’ and ‘must be a primary consideration’.

However, these can be outweighed by the cumulative effect of other considerations, and it is ‘important to have a clear idea of a child’s circumstances’.

Mr Atkinson concluded that the council has not completed the ‘necessary reassessment’ of this, in view of new information regarding the needs of the people living on the land.

“That is not a criticism of the council. The information has only recently come to light,” he wrote.

“However, now that it has done so, the council does need to demonstrate that it has reviewed its position.”

The result is that there will be an extension of the interim injunction.

However, the final injunction won’t be decided yet.