Cases - Romer v Haringey London Borough Council
Record details
- Name
- Romer v Haringey London Borough Council
- Date
- [2006]
- Citation
- EWHC 3480 (Admin)
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Enforcement notice
- Summary
-
The claimant owned 2 adjoining properties, nos 221 and 223. He demolished garages and erected a residential unit that lay mostly within the curtilage of no 221, but a small part extended onto no 223. The LPA issued an enforcement notice complaining of a change of use without planning permission and requiring removal and reinstatement. The notice mistakenly referred to no 223 instead of 221. The claimant successfully appealed against the notice on the ground that the notice had identified the wrong site. So the authority issued a second notice in respect of no 221. The claimant argued that the notice was out of time (more than 4 years had elapsed) and that the authority could not rely on section 171B(4)(b) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to take further enforcement action because the 2 notices did not relate to the same breach - they related to different properties with different registered titles and one alleged a change of use and the other alleged operational development.
The appeal was dismissed. Applying the principle set out in Jarmain v Secretary of State (2000), the judge held that the 2 notices related to the same breach, notwithstanding that they specified different sites, as they both dealt with the same development by the same owner. It would have been otherwise if the notices related to 2 different physical developments or different changes of use.