Graham Gover Solicitor

Time-limited permissions: do conditions survive?

geegovah — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:43:56 +0000

Sir David Keene delivered a judgement on what was an entirely novel point of law: do conditions remain enforceable after the expiry of a planning permission which was granted for a limited time? His answer in this case was “No”.

The planning permission in question was for 42 holiday bungalows subject to

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Successful appeal against enforcement notice

geegovah — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:40:37 +0000

I recently acted for a client who had been served with an enforcement notice requiring the removal of a residential caravan in the grounds of his house in East Dorset. My client purchased the land less than ten years before the service of the notice and it was present on the land at

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Proposed changes to listed building control

geegovah — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:07:30 +0000

The government has just announced proposals to introduce new legislation “when parliamentary time allows” that will assist owners of listed buildings and developers to understand in respect of each listed building what changes can be made without the need for prior listed building consent.

There is a common misunderstanding by some owners

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Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and planning

geegovah — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:12:00 +0000

The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement contained many welcome proposals to reform the planning system.

The Statement stressed the need for planning reforms and included the promise of a review of the appeals process to make it faster and transparent, with proposals for implementation in summer 2012. An Infrastructure Plan set out a pipeline

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Planning – conditions precedent

geegovah — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:02:42 +0000

The Court of Appeal has recently revisited the tricky issue of the wording of a condition and whether it amounts to a prohibition of the commencement of development without the agreement of specified works.

In that case, condition 4 of the planning agreement stated: “Before any work is commenced on the site

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Burger and chips – a second helping

geegovah — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:26:14 +0000

I reported in a previous post that the high court had upheld a local resident’s claim that the local planning authority could take into account the proximity of a school to a proposed fast-food takeaway where that school had a healthy-eating policy.

A Yorkshire council attempted to apply that principle when opposing an appeal against

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Affecting the setting of listed buildings

geegovah — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:04:42 +0000

The recent case of R (Garner) v Elmbridge BC is important to our understanding of proposals that will affect the setting of a listed building.

The listed building in this case is arguably one of the most important in the country, Hampton Court Palace. The proposed building was a hotel to be sited next

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Election to Legal Associate of the Royal Town Planning Institute

geegovah — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:19:34 +0000

On 30th August I was pleased to be informed that I had been elected to the Legal Associate membership of the Royal Town Planning Institute.

My assessor’s comments were:

“The Candidate shows a good depth of general experience in planning law. His employment history is sound with a wide variety

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Demolition – new burdens for developers

geegovah — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:23:39 +0000

I was recently asked to advise a client who wanted to find a legitimate way to demolish a hotel that was locally listed. Planning permission for an extension had been refused, and local listing meant that demolition was ‘discouraged’, but not prohibited. Demolition also meant that prior notice had to be given to the

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Problems with OS X 10.7 Lion printer drivers solved

geegovah — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 14:31:07 +0000

I recently sounded off about the change to OS X Lion causing problems with unsupported software. One major casualty was Dropbox, but that was caused by the fact that I had not upgraded to the latest version. That was due in part to Dropbox being uncharacteristically poor at informing clients of the availability of

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