Roberts & Anor v South Gloucestershire Council

In assessing compensation for compulsory acquisition, statutory planning assumptions must be separated from valuation effects caused by the acquiring authority’s scheme. An assumed permission for road construction does not create value where the relevant section is useless or disembodied. Excavation required for the road forms part of one indivisible process and cannot be treated as an independent right to extract minerals where the road will not be completed. Scheme-related enhancement and value arising from unlawful use must be disregarded.

The appellants’ agricultural land was compulsorily acquired by South Gloucestershire Council for part of the Avon Ring Road. Their land contained a short section of road designed as a deep cutting, requiring substantial excavation. The Lands Tribunal awarded compensation based on agricultural value and rejected a claim based on the supposed value of extracting the excavated minerals.

The appeal concerned the interaction between the planning assumptions under the Land Compensation Act 1961, the scheme-disregard principle, and the legal character of the excavation and road-construction operations.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Lands Tribunal’s award was confirmed.

2. Under sections 14 and 15 of the Land Compensation Act 1961, the claimant may benefit from an assumed planning permission for development of the relevant land in accordance with the acquiring authority’s proposals. That assumption concerns planning status; it does not require valuation to include enhancement attributable to the authority’s scheme on other land.

3. The actual road permission benefited only the authority. The assumed permission nevertheless covered the proposed road development on the acquired land. A disembodied section of road leading nowhere was incapable of adding market value.

4. The excavation and removal of minerals formed part of the indivisible process of constructing the road. The assumed permission did not authorise a mineral operator to excavate while knowing that the road would never be completed. Copeland DC v Secretary of State supported treating the construction as a single operation.

5. West Bowers Farm Products v Essex County Council did not establish that purpose is always irrelevant or that operations categorised separately for planning purposes may be detached from one indivisible process. R v Durham CC ex p Lowther confirmed the contextual nature of the analysis.

6. Section 5(4) also excluded any enhancement arising from unlawful mineral working. The statutory word “use” was not confined by the planning definition of development in section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): appeal from the Lands Tribunal dismissed and the Tribunal’s compensation award confirmed.