Suspension inappropriate

Mid-Bedfordshire District Council v Brown and others CA TLR 3 January

The defendants were gypsies who, in flagrant breach of a court order, had moved their caravans and their vans, including young children, onto agricultural land in a green belt area in an area of great landscape value and were using it as an unauthorised caravan site. Although the judge had granted a final injunction restraining the defendants from using the land for residential purposes, he suspended the order pending the determination of a planning application, which was received only after the defendants had confronted the court and the planning authority with the fait accompli of an unauthorised and unlawful change in land use. The judge was wrong to have done so. His decision to suspend the injunction did not take proper account of the vital role of the court in upholding the important principle that the orders of the court were meant to be obeyed and not to be ignored with impunity. The order itself indicated to the defendants the correct way to challenge the injunction. It contained an express provision giving the defendants liberty to apply, on prior notice, to discharge or modify the order. If the defendants wished to challenge the order, the proper course was to apply to the court to discharge or vary it. If that failed, the proper course was to seek to appeal. Instead the defendants pressed on as originally planned as if no court order had ever been made. They cocked a snook at the court. They did so in order to steal a march on the council and to achieve the very state of affairs that the order was designed to prevent. There was a real risk that the suspension would be perceived as condoning the breach. That would send the wrong signal, both to others tempted to do the same and to the law-abiding members of the public. The overarching public interest considerations far outweighed the factors that favoured suspension of the injunction so as to allow the defendants to keep their caravans on the land and to continue to reside in breach of planning control.