Articles tagged Travellers
Case comment: Secretary of State for EFRA v Meier [2009] UKSC 11 [updated]
The judgment in Secretary of State for EFRA v Meier [2009] UKSC 11 is one of three handed down this week. The judgment was given nearly 6 months after the case was heard in the House of Lords – a period of delay which is often thought to indicat…
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Thoroughly premature planning injunction…
Brentwood Borough Council v Ball & Ors [2009] EWHC 2433 (QB)
This was the hearing of an application for an injunction by Brentwood BC. The defendants were six gypsies who had together purchased a plot of land, called Plot 3, in 2009. This was designated agricultural land in Brentwood’s area.
At the time of purchase, the plot [...]
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Of Car Parks, Caravans and Councillor’s commitments
The City & Council of Swansea v Christine Joyce (and others) Cardiff District Registry, Chancery Division 31 March 2009 7CF30099
This is an example of a post Doherty public law defence at first hearing, and one that succeeded where an alternative defence of estoppel didn’t.
Two Traveller families, the Joyces and the McDonaghs, had been camped on [...]
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Peverse incentive
We don’t usually cover gypsy & traveller planning permission cases, since they tend to turn on their own facts, but Rafferty and another v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and another [2009] EWCA Civ 809 has one point of wider importance.
The appellants owned a site (comprised of two separate plots) at Reeves [...]
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Not seriously arguable
Another case on post-Doherty public law defences was handed down on Friday. Stokes v London Borough of Brent [2009] EWHC 1426 (QB) concerned an appeal summary possession order made against a traveller in unlicenced occupation of a plot on a Brent traveller’s site.
Ms Stokes had lived at her mother’s plot on the site and had [...]
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The difference in Doherty?
A Court of Appeal judgment expressly dealing with a post Doherty public law defence to termination of licence by Notice to Quit was handed down today. Doran v Liverpool City Council [2009] EWCA Civ 146 concerned a possession claim for a plot on a local authority travellers’ site.
Liverpool served Notice to Quit on the basis [...]
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The Basildon Endgame
As people may well have noticed from the news on TV and in the press, the last Court of Appeal hearing in the drawn out saga of the (unlawful) Essex traveller sites resulted in a defeat for the travellers. Basildon District Council v McCarthy & Ors [2009] EWCA Civ 13 was the Court of Appeal [...]
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Alternative sites – the burden of proof
South Cambridgeshire District Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government & Ors [2008] EWCA Civ 1010 was an appeal of a High Court decision on Judicial Review of the decision of an Inspector in the appeal of a planning decision not to allow residential caravan siting for a family on a property [...]
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Pre-emptive possession orders
Secretary of State for the Environment Food & Rural Affairs v Meier & Ors [2008] EWCA Civ 903 was a case concerning travellers encamped on Forestry Commission land. Some of the travellers had previously camped on a nearby patch of Forestry Commission land until a possession order was obtained. The Forestry Commission (or rather the [...]
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Considering Equality of Opportunity
Baker & Ors, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government& Ors [2008] EWCA Civ 141. A Court of Appeal judgment on appeals of refusal for planning permission for the retention of mobile homes on green belt land by Irish traveller families. The appeal failed, but what is particularly [...]
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