Cases - Crawley Borough Council v Hickmet Ltd

Record details

Name

Crawley Borough Council v Hickmet Ltd

Date

[1998]

Citation

JPL 210

Keywords

Planning control

Summary

The established use of the appeal site was commercial storage. The respondents began to use it for car parking for passengers flying out of Gatwick Airport. The local planning authority sought an injunction restraining the respondents from using the site for car parking. The respondents contended that the parking of cars while their owners were abroad amounted to commercial storage.

At first instance, the judge concluded that parking amounted to commercial storage. The Court of Appeal held that the judge had made an error of law. It was necessary, as a matter of planning law, to determine the use of the land. This required examining the activity, assessing the primary purpose to which the land was being put and deciding whether it could fairly be called 'storage'. The activity clearly indicated a primary use of land for car parking and not storage. Parking of cars for 2 to 3 weeks was not sufficient to constitute storage. It is an incident in the normal use of a car as it is being used for transport to and from the airport.