Developer who deceived council over home disguised as barn avoids eviction

A developer who admitted deliberately deceiving Welwyn Hatfield Council into granting planning permission for a hay barn on green belt land when all along he intended to build a home has defeated a bid by the local authority to evict him.

Alan Beesley built the home between January and July 2002. It had the external appearance of a barn, but was fitted out internally as a dwelling with entrance hall, study, lounge, bedrooms and so on. The house does not have conventional windows, but has rooflights and ceiling openings. It is also connected to mains electricity, water and drainage.

Beesley and his wife claimed that they moved into the property on 9 August 2002 and have lived there continuously since. However, he avoided the residential use coming to the attention of the council, which had granted planning permission for the barn in December 2001.

On 15 August 2006, he applied for a certificate of lawfulness of existing use under s. 191 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, claiming that the four-year time period for enforcement action against use of the building as a dwelling had expired.

The council refused the certificate. An appeal by the developer was upheld by an inspector, but overturned by Mr Justice Andrew Collins in the High Court in 2009.

The Court of Appeal has now restored the inspector’s decision, saying that Beesley was entitled to the certificate even though he did not get the correct approvals.

Giving the lead judgement, Lord Justice Richards said: “The lesson for local planning authorities is clear. When checking whether a building has been built in accordance with planning permission and is being used in accordance with the permitted use, they need to look carefully at the inside of the building and not just at the exterior.

“External appearances can be highly misleading, as this case shows, and authorities need to be alert to the possibility of deception.”

The judge said the legislation was open to abuse, but whether it should be amended to prevent dishonest advantage was a matter for Parliament.

Lord Justice Mummery, agreeing, said: “It is a surprising outcome which decent law-abiding citizens will find incomprehensible: a public authority, deceived into granting planning permission by a dishonest planning application, can be required by law to issue an official certificate to the culprit consolidating the fruits of the fraud.”