Barratt & Anor v Ashford Borough Council

A listed-building entry must be construed objectively and as a whole. Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation) Act 1990, the question is whether a reasonable person inspecting the official list can identify the particular building. The legislation requires a list of buildings, not an infallible list of names. A correct name and address are generally desirable, but are not exclusive statutory conditions of an effective listing. An inaccurate name or address does not invalidate an entry where its descriptions, references and incorporated maps clearly and precisely identify the actual building. A map need not be physically attached to the list if the entry incorporates it by reference and it is publicly available for inspection.

The appellants bought an eighteenth-century cottage known as Hayes Cottage, Ebony Road. The local planning authority sought an interim injunction in June 2008 to restrain unauthorised works. Its case was that the cottage was a listed building.

The relevant 1979 list described a building as High House Cottage in Corkscrew Lane. Those were not the cottage’s name or road. The entry also contained an Ordnance Survey reference and an annotated-map item which identified the cottage’s location. The Canterbury County Court determined a preliminary issue in the council’s favour.

The appeal concerned whether, despite errors in its name, address and description, the entry effectively included the cottage in the list for the purposes of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation) Act 1990.

Decision

1. Appeal dismissed. Lord Justice Mummery, with whom Lord Justice Richards and Lord Justice Aikens agreed, affirmed the Recorder’s ruling that the cottage was a listed building on the material date.
2. The statutory scheme requires an authoritative, publicly accessible list from which it is reasonably possible to determine whether a particular building is listed. It does not prescribe a form of entry or require a building to be identified exclusively, or invariably, by its correct name and address. The court must construe the whole entry objectively and contextually. The inquiry is one of law, not of the compilers’ subjective intentions or the affected owner’s actual knowledge.
3. City of Edinburgh v Secretary of State for Scotland [1997] 1 WLR 1447 did not impose literal accuracy as the criterion. Its ratio concerned whether a riding school fell within the listed group of Redford Barracks. The House of Lords resolved that question by reading the list as a whole and sensibly. Lord Hope’s general observations about the significance of a name column did not require the present entry to be treated as ineffective.
4. The Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation) Act 1990 requires a list of physical buildings, not an official list of names. A building may therefore be effectively listed by a combination of intelligible identifying details, despite an incorrect name or address. References within an entry may incorporate publicly inspectable maps. Here, the references to the relevant sheet and item 422 formed part of the entry and pinpointed the appellants’ cottage. They identified no other nearby building.
5. The verbal description did not undermine that conclusion. Read as a whole, it fitted the cottage, and the evidence supported the Recorder’s understanding of the reference to two casements. The listing consequently complied with the statutory requirements.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — dismissed the appeal and affirmed the Recorder’s preliminary ruling: [2011] EWCA Civ 27.
• Canterbury County Court — Mr Recorder Gerlis determined that Hayes Cottage was a listed building at the date of the injunction application.