Woods v Sevenoaks District Council

Withdrawal of an abatement notice does not deprive magistrates of jurisdiction over an appeal already properly commenced by complaint. The magistrates retain jurisdiction to determine the complaint and may quash the notice and make an appropriate costs order. The authority’s withdrawal remains effective for other purposes.

Where evidence is presented in an unusual order, a party wishing to submit that there is no case to answer may be required to elect whether to call further evidence. If the party declines to rely on the evidence already called, the magistrates may hear the remaining evidence before deciding the appeal. A supervisory court will not reweigh evidence or interfere merely because another conclusion was possible.

The appellant appealed by two cases stated against decisions of magistrates concerning abatement notices served by Sevenoaks District Council under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The council withdrew the first notice after an initial hearing had been aborted because a magistrate recused himself, and served a second notice. The magistrates declined to determine costs relating to the first notice and later dismissed the appeal against the second notice, refusing to hear a submission of no case to answer before the appellant had given evidence.

The issues were whether withdrawal terminated the first appeal, whether costs could be deferred, whether the appellant was entitled to make a no-case submission at the close of the council’s evidence, and whether the findings on recurrence of nuisance were legally or evidentially unsustainable.

1. The first appeal was allowed to the limited extent that the first abatement notice was quashed. Otherwise the first appeal, and the appeal against the second notice, were dismissed.

2. The council had power in appropriate circumstances to withdraw the first notice. However, withdrawal did not terminate the pending appeal. Jurisdiction arose from the appellant’s properly constituted complaint under the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, not from the continuing existence of the notice. The magistrates therefore retained jurisdiction to adjudicate the complaint.

3. The position was analogous to R v Cannock Justices ex parte Astbury [1972] LGR 619. A notice could not be used to deprive the magistrates of jurisdiction after an appeal had been entered. The more accurate formulation was that withdrawal could not remove that jurisdiction, rather than that withdrawal was invariably ineffective without the recipient’s consent.

4. The magistrates were entitled to defer costs relating to the first notice until the second appeal had been determined. Their refusal to order the council to pay those costs was an exercise of a wide discretion and involved no error of principle. The first hearing had failed through no party’s fault, and the costs were linked to the continuing substantive dispute.

5. On the no-case issue, the ordinary procedure described in Alexander v Rayson [1936] 1 KB 178, subject to the caution in Boyce v Wyatt Engineering [2001] EWCA Civ 692, permitted the appellant to elect whether to call further evidence or make submissions on the council’s evidence. Having declined that course, she could not complain that the magistrates heard her evidence before deciding the appeal.

6. There was evidence on which the magistrates could find that the nuisance was likely to recur. The supervisory court could not reassess its weight, and the decision was neither perverse nor otherwise unlawful.

7. There was no jurisdiction to appeal to the Court of Appeal from the High Court’s decision on a civil appeal by way of case stated under section 111 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, following Westminster City Council v O’Reilly.

The appeals dismissed were dismissed with costs.

1. High Court (Administrative Court): appeals by way of case stated from decisions of magistrates sitting at Sevenoaks on 30 October and 4 December 2003. The first appeal was allowed only to quash the first notice; otherwise both appeals were dismissed.