An enforcement notice service failure has brought down a Bedford Borough Council notice requiring the closure of a container storage operation at Struttle End Farm, Ravensden. Planning Inspector J Whitfield allowed two related enforcement appeals and quashed the notice on 23rd October 2026 after finding that storage customers who were materially affected had not been served.
The notice, issued on 10 April 2026, alleged an unauthorised change of use involving shipping containers used for self-storage and the installation of hardstanding. It required the storage use to cease, the containers and specified hardstanding to be removed, and the land to be reinstated. The appeals were made by Jonathan Erven and I Want Storage Ltd under references 3378548 and 3378549.
I think the unusual point is who counts when an authority serves an enforcement notice. This was not simply a case of the council overlooking a registered landowner. Customers had contractual arrangements to store their own belongings in containers and to access them. The Inspector considered those rights sufficiently connected with occupation, or with material interests affected by the notice, to make the failures decisive.
Why enforcement notice service mattered to storage customers
Section 172(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires an enforcement notice to be served on owners and occupiers of the relevant land and on other people whose interests the local planning authority considers materially affected. It is not enough simply to establish who owns the freehold. Depending on the facts, an occupier may have rights under a lease, licence or less formal arrangement.
The appellants contended that a local farmer and customers using the storage containers should have received copies of the notice. The Inspector drew a distinction between those groups. The farmer was not shown to have occupied the land when the notice was issued. His possible future farming of the land, if storage ceased, did not establish the requisite interest at the relevant date.
Storage customers were different. Their contracts allowed them to keep privately owned property on the appeal land and to access it at specified times. Requiring the business to stop and the containers to be removed would affect their ability to store and retrieve that property. In this enforcement notice service dispute, the Inspector regarded the customers as occupiers or, alternatively, people materially affected by the notice.
No copies had been served on those customers. Nor had they participated in the appeals or provided evidence supporting the appellants. The Inspector found that the lack of service caused substantial prejudice, preventing the non-service from being disregarded under section 176(5). The appeals therefore succeeded on ground (e) under section 174(2) and the enforcement notice was quashed.
What Bedford’s planning contravention notice missed
Before issuing the enforcement notice, the council had served a planning contravention notice, or PCN, on 16 January 2026. The Inspector noted that its questions addressed matters such as the freeholder, leaseholder and ownership of the containers, but did not ask the recipient to identify other occupiers or people whose interests might be affected.
That omission mattered because the council could not treat the names on the title register as a complete service list. A planning contravention notice can be used to establish who occupies land and what interests exist, although its issue is discretionary. For an active storage business, the arrangements with container users warranted consideration.
There is a practical lesson in enforcement notice service here. A person need not have the same rights as a conventional tenant to be relevant to an authority’s service obligations. What they control, how they use the land, the duration of their arrangements and the consequences of compliance all require attention. The decision does not say every customer of every business must automatically be served.
The defective plan was not the decisive fault
The enforcement notice contained another problem. It required removal of hardstanding shown by orange hatching on a plan, yet the plan attached to the notice had no orange hatching. The council supplied a proposed replacement during the appeal. That proposed area included land on which no hardstanding existed when the notice was issued.
The Inspector considered that adopting the replacement plan would cause injustice because the appellants would be required to remove something that was not present. But he also indicated that the notice could have been corrected in another way, by referring to the hardstanding forming part of the alleged breach without using that defective plan reference.
The distinction is important. The missing hatching did not itself determine the outcome. It was the failed enforcement notice service and the resulting prejudice to customers that led to the two appeals being allowed. The Inspector did not have to resolve the remaining substantive enforcement grounds once ground (e) succeeded.
Why the successful appellants received no costs
A separate costs application by Jonathan Erven and I Want Storage Ltd sought a full award against Bedford Borough Council. The same Inspector refused it on 23rd October 2026. Winning an appeal and recovering appeal costs are different decisions, with different tests.
The costs decision addressed three complaints: the council’s investigation of persons to be served, the defective hardstanding plan and disagreement about the land covered by the notice. The Inspector did not make a finding on the wider land-boundary allegation, and he did not regard the council’s handling of the plan error as unreasonable conduct warranting costs.
He did, however, find that the council had acted unreasonably by not adequately investigating potential occupiers and materially affected interests before issuing the notice. That is a significant criticism of the enforcement notice service process. It was not, on its own, sufficient to justify reimbursement.
The further requirement was that the unreasonable conduct had caused unnecessary or wasted expense. The Inspector concluded that the appellants would still have needed to argue ground (e), even if the council had undertaken a more thorough investigation, because the council maintained its position that the customers did not require service. He therefore found no additional expense caused by the identified shortcoming and rejected the application.
What the enforcement notice service ruling means
For councils, the case underlines the need to understand actual occupation and commercial arrangements before serving a notice. An up-to-date title search is useful but may not reveal everyone whose rights will be materially affected. Where a business allows third parties to store goods on land, the authority should investigate the underlying agreements and consider service carefully.
For owners and operators, it demonstrates the value of examining the validity and service history of a notice separately from the planning merits of the alleged breach. The fact that the enforcement notice was quashed does not, by itself, establish that container storage is lawful or grant planning permission for it. It means the particular notice cannot stand.
More broadly, enforcement notice service disputes show why procedural safeguards are substantive protections. The potential loss of access to stored belongings was central to the Inspector’s prejudice finding. The refusal of costs is an equally useful reminder that unreasonable conduct must be linked to wasted expense before a costs award follows.
For related guidance, see Planning Geek’s types of planning enforcement and award of costs in planning appeals guides.
The source decisions concern enforcement appeals 3378548 and 3378549, together with the separate refusal of the costs application.
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