George Mellor & Ors v The Secretary of State for Transport

For the purposes of the blight-notice regime, the occupation and ownership conditions for being an owner-occupier must be satisfied by the same person or persons. Joint claimants cannot combine occupation by one claimant with ownership by another. Occupation of the whole agricultural unit is required. A company’s occupation through its directors does not make the directors personally occupiers of every part of the land occupied by the company. The separate legal personality of a company must be respected. Where a farming business is carried on by a partnership, Town and Country Planning Act 1990, s.164(2) may attribute occupation by the partners to the firm. That route was unavailable where the business was conducted by a company. The blight notice was therefore invalid.

The claimants served a blight notice under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requiring the Secretary of State to purchase Manor Farm and adjoining agricultural land affected by the proposed HS2 Phase 2(a) route. The agricultural unit included two dwellings, farm buildings and land owned in different combinations by members of the Mellor family.

The family members and their company jointly gave the notice. The farming enterprise was conducted by the company, which occupied parts of Manor Farm under licence and was said to occupy the Colton land under an uncompleted agreement for sale. The preliminary issue was whether any claimant was an owner-occupier under s.168(2), satisfying both the occupation and ownership conditions.

1. Validity of the notice. The notice stood or fell in relation to the whole agricultural unit. The Tribunal assumed, without deciding, that a notice given by several persons could remain valid if only one of them satisfied the statutory conditions.
2. Same person must satisfy both conditions. Section 168(2) requires an owner-occupier to satisfy both the occupation requirement and the ownership requirement. Those requirements cannot be divided between different claimants. The individual family members satisfied the ownership condition because each had an owner’s interest in part of the unit, but the company did not have an owner’s interest.
3. Occupation by the company. It was unnecessary to decide conclusively whether the company occupied both dwellings. Even if it did, its occupation through human agents did not make the directors personally occupiers of land occupied by the company. The company and its directors were separate legal persons. The evidence also showed that neither couple had physical presence in or control over the other couple’s dwelling. Consequently, no individual claimant had occupied the whole agricultural unit for the required six-month period.
4. Partnership alternative. The result could have been different if the business had been carried on by the partnership. Under s.164(2), occupation for the purposes of the partnership would have been treated as occupation by the firm, and the partners could potentially have satisfied the occupation and ownership conditions. The claimants had expressly abandoned that case because the farming business was conducted by the company.
5. The claimants were not owner-occupiers during either relevant period. The blight notice was invalid and the Secretary of State’s objection was upheld.