UK Construction and Law

A council that did not perform the public sector equality duty still gets its planning injunction

By Staff Writer  |  30 August 2026

The High Court granted a permanent injunction under section 187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 over unauthorised development on designated open land in a conservation area. The authority had not carried out any recorded equality assessment, but the outcome would not have been substantially different if it had.

The land sits at a junction at the eastern edge of the Blackpool conurbation, in an area of former market gardening that keeps an open and rural character. It is designated as open land in the local plan, it lies in a conservation area, and the neighbourhood plan restricts development there to three named categories. Nothing done on the site fell into any of them.

The owners bought the plot in May 2022 for 30,000 pounds. Within a month the council found diggers clearing the land and a boundary fence going up. A pre-application enquiry for four bungalows was answered with a recommendation of refusal. An enforcement notice followed, an inspector dismissed the appeal in December 2025, and there was no challenge on a point of law. The owners then levelled the site, laid hardcore and moved caravans on. A planning application for four permanent pitches was made in June 2026, after the enforcement clock had run out.

The court accepted the harm and the flagrancy

Under section 187B the question is not whether there has been a breach but whether an injunction is a just and proportionate remedy. The judge treated the inspector's findings on harm as an exercise of planning judgment with which he agreed, and held that serious planning harm was being caused and would remain even if the current application succeeded. He also found the breach flagrant, coming immediately after the period for compliance with the enforcement notice expired and after advice that permission was unlikely.

He accepted there was no evidence of nuisance or anti-social behaviour, and no reason to fear that occupation would intensify beyond the four plots proposed.

Where the authority fell down

The council produced no equality impact assessment and no internal record of any consideration of the duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. Its head of legal services said she had assessed the position consciously without documenting it. The judge was not convinced. Had she understood what the duty required in a case of this kind, he said, she would have said so in her witness statement as she had about the Convention rights, and she would have commissioned some form of analysis that was recorded somewhere.

Since the duty to comply with the PSED is a continuing duty there was, in my judgment, a positive obligation to re-assess the situation after seeing what the Defendants said in their evidence about their background and their position.

His Honour Judge Stephen Davies

That is the practical point for any authority contemplating enforcement of this kind. The duty bites before the decision to seek relief, and it bites again when the defendants finally put their case in evidence, which in this case was months later and only after they had lawyers.

Breach without consequence, and the limit on persons unknown

A breach of the duty does not by itself defeat the claim. Applying the approach in Forward v Aldwyck Housing, the court asked whether it was highly likely the decision would not have been substantially different had the duty been performed. It held that it would not, given the absence of any real prospect of permission, the length of time already allowed, the availability of pitches recorded in the area assessment, and the harm continuing meanwhile. The same factors answered the Convention and children's best interests arguments.

Two points went the other way. The council asked for 14 days to vacate and got 21. And the injunction against persons unknown was refused: there was no compelling need for it, no reason to fear that unconnected people would move on, and the order against the named defendants already prohibits them from permitting anyone else to do so. An undertaking was accepted from the third owner, who has never lived on the land.