18 February 10
In Fidler V Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 143 (Admin), a landowner built a house without obtaining planning permission and concealed it behind bales of straw covered with tarpaulin. After four years, the landowner removed the straw bales and the tarpaulin to reveal the house. Within a year of the bales being removed, the local planning authority issued an enforcement notice requiring the landowner to demolish the house.
The landowner claimed that the property was immune from planning enforcement action because more than four years had passed since the building operations were substantially completed.
The High Court held that the erection and removal of the bales and tarpaulin were not building operations in their own right. However, the landowner had always intended to remove the bales and tarpaulin so, as a matter of fact and degree, their removal was part of the building operations when the totality of the operations as originally contemplated and intended was considered. The property was not immune from planning enforcement action.
At first glance, the decision that taking down a wall of straw bales amounts to building operations appears to be surprising. However, it is a good illustration of the holistic approach take by the House of Lords in Sage v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions [2003] UKHL 22 and makes it clear that the meaning of “building operations” for the purposes of section 171B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (TCPA 1990) is wider than the definition set out in section 55 of the TCPA 1990.
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