Injunction but not possession

Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs v Meier [2009] UKSC 11; SJ 8 December p4

The Forestry Commission sought possession of more than 50 woods that it managed across Dorset. A number of travellers had set up camp in Hethfelton Wood, including the defendant and her two children. The claim was reduced to 13 woods, spread over an area of Dorset 25 miles east to west and 10 miles north to south and coupled with an application for an injunction over the same area. The county court granted an order for possession of Hethfelton Wood only and refused to grant the injunction. The Court of Appeal granted both the order for possession and injunction in respect of the 13 woods. On appeal to the Supreme Court it held it was simply not possible to make the enlarged or wider order of possession sought by the Forrestry Commission. Lord Neuberger said: ‘The notion that an order for possession may be sought by a claimant and made against defendants in respect of land which is wholly detached and separated, possibly by many miles, from that occupied by the defendants, seems to me to be difficult, indeed impossible to justify. The defendants do not occupy or possess such land in any conceivable way, and the claimant enjoys the uninterrupted possession of it. Equally, the defendants have not ejected the claimant from such land. For the same reasons, it does not make sense to talk about the claimant recovering possession of such land or to order the defendants to deliver up possession of such land’. However, an injunction could be granted even where there was little prospect of enforcing it by imprisonment or other sanction. If an injunction could have a real deterrent effect, it might be appropriate to grant it.