Gypsies

Chichester District Council v First Secretary of State and others [2004] EWCA Civ 1248

The applicants were gypsies. In 1999 one of them purchased some land (the site). Without notification to the claimant local authority, they later placed mobile homes and caravans onto the site. The authority issued enforcement notices requiring the removal of the mobile homes and caravans. The site did not fall into the Green Belt, nor did it otherwise fall for any special designation. On the gypsies’ appealing against the notices the Court of Appeal held that the issuing of enforcement notices by the local authority constituted a disproportionate, and therefore unlawful, interference by the authority with the gypsies’ rights under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Those rights were not the non-existent ‘rights’ as gypsies to be provided with a home or a site for a home by the state, but they were the rights to respect for the homes that they had created – homes admittedly created in breach of planning laws. The authority’s legitimate action in issuing enforcement notices was an interference with those rights and that interference was neither justified nor proportionate. The appeal succeeded.