Sophie Catherine Mary Dean & Ors v Simon Mitchell & Anor

A site licence need not be in force for land to qualify as a protected site under the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Mobile Homes Act 1983. However, on ordinary statutory interpretation, the 1983 Act does not apply where planning permission was absent when the occupation agreement began. That exclusion was incompatible with Article 8 because it imposed a severe and potentially arbitrary loss of residential security on occupiers whose sites later obtained planning permission. Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 could not resolve the incompatibility without crossing fundamental policy choices. The appropriate remedy was therefore a declaration of incompatibility under section 4.

The claimants sought possession of land occupied by the first defendant in a mobile home as his only or main residence. The occupation began in about 2001, when the site had neither planning permission nor a site licence. In 2015 a certificate of lawful use or development was issued, but no site licence was ever obtained.

The preliminary issues were whether the land was a protected site despite the absence of a site licence and, if so, whether the exclusion of an agreement made before planning permission was obtained was compatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court also considered whether section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 could be used to interpret the 1983 Act compatibly.

1. Protected site. The definition in section 1(2) of the Caravan Sites Act 1968, incorporated into the Mobile Homes Act 1983, requires land to be land in respect of which a site licence is required. It does not require a site licence to be in force. The wording of section 4(6) of the 1968 Act, the change from the 1975 Act definition of owner, section 5(4) of the 1968 Act and Holmes v Cooper supported that conclusion.
2. Statutory position. Applying Murphy v Wyatt, the 1983 Act did not, without Convention considerations, apply to an occupation agreement made before the site obtained planning permission. The certificate of lawful use had the statutory effect of a grant of planning permission for the relevant purposes.
3. Article 8. The dispute between private parties engaged the State’s positive obligation to secure respect for the home. The relevant measure was the exclusion from the 1983 Act of occupiers whose agreements pre-dated planning permission, even where planning permission was later obtained. Applying the structured proportionality test in Bank Mellat v HM Treasury (No 2), the objective of protecting planning interests was legitimate and the measure was rationally connected to a possible deterrent objective. However, the evidence did not establish a pressing social need for the additional temporal exclusion.
4. The exclusion imposed a severe interference with the right to respect for the home. It deprived settled residents of important procedural protections, created potentially arbitrary distinctions based on the timing of planning permission, and treated comparable occupations differently from agreements later varied into the statutory scheme. The severity of the effects outweighed the limited support for the asserted deterrent objective. The exclusion was therefore disproportionate.
5. Remedy. Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is the primary interpretative remedy, but it cannot be used where the proposed interpretation conflicts with a fundamental feature of the legislation or requires unresolved policy choices. The proposed amendments raised such choices concerning notice, enforceability, tribunal jurisdiction and the scope of implied terms. A declaration was therefore made under section 4 that the 1983 Act was incompatible with Article 8 insofar as it excluded agreements made before the grant of planning permission.

First-instance determination of preliminary issues. The judgment records earlier decisions in the same litigation, including Dean v Mitchell, but no appellate history of this judgment is stated.