AC-2024-LON-002192 - [2025] EWHC 2815 (Admin)

Gladwins Wood is a registered ancient woodland, protected by a Tree Preservation Order, which sits along the east side of the M25 between Gerrards Cross and Denham, within the green belt. There is “a considerable history of enforcement action”. The Inspector said:

“The current site is huge and contains dozens if not 100s of containers as well as compounds for plant hire, builder’s yards and many scaffolding companies. It has expanded massively from the very limited lawful use allowed by the 2013 notice which is still in force.”

The Land has a single access track. There are locked entrance gates at the northern end of the access track (where it meets Pinstone Way), and at the point where the access track (which forms part of the Land) meets the large, irregularly shaped area which constitutes the rest of the Land. Both sets of gates can be opened by keycode, or by pressing a portable device (which is given to each occupier), or by the owners pressing a button.

The Inspector observed that it “was never clear how many persons or companies occupied the site”, and as “a lot of the occupiers do not have a tenancy agreement and Mr Turner, by his own admission, has as little to do with the occupiers as possible, I’m not sure that even the Turners know exactly who and where the occupiers are”. The occupiers “are constantly changing” and so “it would have been very difficult to pin down exactly who was in occupation on the date the notice was issued”.

The Council issued the Enforcement Notice in 2021 and served it on the appellant and various members of his family who are also involved in the business. There is no dispute that the appellant was duly served and knew about the Enforcement Notice. In addition, the Council sought to effect service on the occupiers by (a) sending copies of the Enforcement Notice to 29 different companies who they believed occupied the site; and (b) attaching a copy of the Enforcement Notice to the entrance gates.

After the appeal had been lodged, the Council twice wrote to the appellant asking for an up-to-date list of occupiers, but the appellant’s agent explained that the appellant “instructed him to ignore those letters”. When, eventually, the Council issued a Planning Contravention Notice, the appellant responded in April 2024 “with a list of 90 companies, many of whom seemed to be the same (such as Invest Scaffolding, Invest Construction and Invest Brickwork for example) plus a further 65 who it seems rented containers on the site”. The Inspector concluded, and there is no dispute on this appeal, that “those renting containers are not occupiers of the land but more akin to clients of a storage company”. Of the 90 companies, 57 were listed as being in occupation when the Enforcement Notice was issued but who did not receive a copy of the notice. In 2024, the Council sent letters to as many of those 57 occupiers as they could find. None showed the site as their address, 17 could not be found, two did not exist in 2021 and two had been dissolved before the Enforcement Notice was issued.

One occupier, MJL Contracts Ltd, wrote to the Inspector that the firm had been occupying a yard at Gladwins Wood since 1 September 2021, but only learned of the Enforcement Notice on 5 March 2024 when Council officers made an unannounced visit to their yard. The letter stated:

“Had we been made aware of the Enforcement Notice when it was served on 20 September 2021 we would have appealed ourselves and looked to put in place measures to ensure business continuity.

The yard at Gladwins is critical to our business operations. I am unaware of any other yards we could relocate to.”

In addition, a person renting a shipping container wrote to the Inspector that he did not know about the notice.

There was some discussion at the hearing before me as to whether the Enforcement Notice was affixed to both sets of entrance gates or one, and if so which one. In my judgment, it is tolerably clear, despite the reference in the singular to “the entrance gate” (in para 29), that the evidence before the Inspector was that it was affixed to both sets of gates (as reflected in the plural references in paras 25-26), and that the Inspector accepted the Council’s evidence, observing that he “had no reason to doubt” it. In any event, ultimately it was common ground, and I agree, that it is of no consequence whether it was affixed to one set of gates or both, or if only one, which it was affixed to.