Greenacres traveller site: High Court orders clearance

The decision is the latest chapter in a planning and enforcement battle which began in 2004. The land has already been through enforcement notices, a stop notice, three planning inquiries, an earlier High Court injunction, years without residential occupation, reoccupation in 2024, a fresh retrospective application and a further planning appeal.

In Somerset Council v Peter Richards (Senior) & Ors [2026] EWHC 2401 (KB), HHJ Siddique concluded that a final injunction under section 187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 was justified and proportionate. Residential occupation must cease within three months, with four months allowed for removal of unauthorised development and reinstatement of the land.

A planning battle that began in 2004

Greenacres is an agricultural field adjoining 6 Oxen Lane at North Curry, near Taunton. Its planning history is unusually long.

Over the weekend of 23rd and 24th October 2004, the land was divided into 16 pitches and occupied as a Gypsy and Traveller site without planning permission. Taunton Deane Borough Council served an enforcement notice and stop notice on 29th October 2004.

The first planning inquiry took place in June 2005. The Secretary of State subsequently dismissed the appeals for the 16-pitch development and upheld the enforcement notice. The 2026 Inspector identified those decisions as APP/D3315/C/04/1167161 and APP/D3315/A/05/1182613.

Further applications then followed for individual pitches. Five appeals were originally lodged for the next inquiry round. Charmaine Packman’s appeal for Plot 1 was withdrawn in October 2007 after she ceased occupying that plot. The four remaining appeals, concerning Plots 7, 8, 15 and 16, were heard over six inquiry days in December 2007 and March 2008 and were dismissed on 3rd June 2008. Somerset’s later planning history identifies APP/D3315/A/07/2043393 within that appeal round.

Plot 1 was subsequently reoccupied and a fresh application led to another inquiry. Appeal APP/D3315/A/08/2076325 was dismissed on 20th April 2009.

There was also a court challenge to the 2008 appeal decisions. Tracey Holland and Jim Smith challenged the dismissals relating to Plots 8 and 16 under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. That challenge failed in R (Holland and Smith) v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2009] EWHC 2161 (Admin).

By then Greenacres had therefore been through three planning inquiry rounds, as well as the section 288 challenge.

High Court proceedings eventually resulted in a final section 187B injunction in 2010. The remaining occupation ended and the site was cleared. It then remained free from residential occupation for many years.

The earlier litigation is reported as Taunton Deane Borough Council v Packman & Ors [2010] EWHC 2437 (QB).

Greenacres was reoccupied in October 2024

The current dispute began when traveller families entered the land again in October 2024.

The High Court recorded the arrival of caravans and mobile homes, engineering operations, hardcore, fencing and works associated with the creation of residential pitches. Somerset Council regarded the development and residential use as unauthorised.

The council began new High Court proceedings on 18th June 2025. On 21st July 2025, HHJ Picton granted interim relief which restricted further works and additional residential occupation while allowing the existing occupiers to remain pending the planning process and final court hearing.

That point matters. Somerset did not press immediately for the site to be cleared. The occupiers were allowed to pursue retrospective planning permission and a statutory planning appeal before the final injunction application was determined.

The 2025 application sought up to 16 traveller pitches

Retrospective application 24/25/0006 sought permission for the change of use of the agricultural land to a Gypsy and Traveller site with 16 pitches, static homes, touring caravans, hardstanding, access works, parking, landscaping and associated infrastructure.

Somerset Council refused the application in November 2025. An appeal followed under reference APP/E3335/W/25/3375539.

By the inquiry in May 2026, the appellant proposed to exclude one pitch, so Inspector H Nicholls considered the scheme on the basis of 15 pitches. Earlier late attempts to reduce the proposal to five or 12 pitches had not been accepted as amendments to the appeal scheme.

Somerset had a major shortage of traveller pitches

The appeal was not dismissed because there was no identified need for Traveller accommodation. Quite the opposite.

Somerset Council’s February 2026 Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment identified a need for 261 additional pitches between 2025/26 and 2044/45, including 153 by 2029/30. The Inspector found that this significant unmet need attracted substantial weight in favour of the development.

The personal circumstances of the occupiers and intended occupiers also carried significant weight. Many families had no authorised alternative accommodation, a large number of children were affected, and a permanent base would provide benefits for education, healthcare and family life.

But those factors did not carry the appeal.

Why the planning appeal was dismissed

The Inspector dismissed the appeal on 1st June 2026 after finding several substantial harms.

Substantial weight was given to harm to the integrity of the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar Site, ecological harm, highway safety and the living conditions of the occupiers of 6 Oxen Lane.

The Inspector also found conflict with the development plan’s locational approach, harm to character and appearance and inadequate surface water drainage. Those matters attracted more modest weight.

The Ramsar issue was particularly important. The development was within the hydrological catchment of the Somerset Levels and Moors Ramsar Site and no satisfactory phosphate budget or secured mitigation package had been provided. The Inspector concluded that harm to the protected site could not be ruled out.

The decision also recorded that the development had been undertaken intentionally without planning permission. Peter Richards had himself made a previous single-pitch application at Greenacres in 2015, which had been refused. In light of that history and the coordinated scale of the 2024 works, the Inspector was satisfied that the planning history was known when occupation recommenced.

Intentional unauthorised development attracted modest weight against the scheme. Because this appeal was decided on 1st June 2026, before the August 2026 NPPF was published, the Inspector was applying the earlier 2015 ministerial policy rather than the new Policy DM8. Our recent report on intentional unauthorised development at Kingston Blount looks at DM8 in a later appeal and explains why the evidence and facts of the particular development remain important.

The appeal also resulted in a partial costs award

Somerset Council also secured a partial award of its appeal costs.

The Inspector found unreasonable behaviour in both the procedure and substance of the appeal case. The decision records at least 87 separate PDF documents spanning more than 3,700 pages, together with more than 40 emails submitted between the appeal and the inquiry.

There had also been repeated attempts to alter the scope of the appeal, extensive correspondence and arguments which the Inspector considered unsupported or of little relevance to the planning case.

The Inspector expressly said she was far from certain that Mr Richards personally knew the amount, content or procedural handling of the appeal case advanced on his behalf. Nevertheless, the partial costs award was made against him.

Read the Greenacres appeal costs decision.

The High Court did not reconsider the planning merits

The High Court hearing took place on 21st and 22nd July 2026. The judgment was handed down on 16th September.

One of the most useful planning points in the judgment is the distinction between the planning appeal and the court’s job under section 187B planning injunction proceedings.

The judge was not entitled to decide afresh whether planning permission should have been granted. The planning merits had already been examined through the statutory planning process.

However, the court still had to exercise its own discretion. Drawing on South Bucks v Porter, it had to consider the hardship an injunction would cause, the availability of alternative accommodation, health and education, family life, the welfare of children and the occupiers’ Article 8 rights.

That is an important distinction. A failed planning appeal does not make a section 187B injunction automatic. But the court is also not a second planning appeal.

Article 8 and the welfare of children carried substantial weight

The court accepted that Greenacres was the home of the remaining occupiers and that requiring them to leave would interfere with their private and family life.

HHJ Siddique also accepted that there was a genuine shortage of authorised Traveller accommodation, that relocation would cause real hardship, and that children, education and healthcare were important considerations.

The evidence included significant health concerns affecting adults and children. The judge attached particular weight to evidence concerning a child awaiting corrective eye surgery and to the health difficulties of Peter Richards Senior.

Traveller status itself was also capable of carrying considerable weight because of the cultural significance of caravan living and the practical shortage of lawful sites.

Our guides to Gypsy and Traveller site planning and human rights in planning enforcement explain these issues in more detail.

Why the judge granted a final injunction

Despite those personal circumstances, the judge concluded that the public interest in enforcing planning control outweighed the interference with the occupiers’ rights.

The planning history carried very substantial weight. Greenacres was not a new breach being enforced for the first time. An enforcement notice dating from October 2004 remained in force. Earlier appeals had failed. A previous High Court injunction had been needed before compliance was eventually achieved. The land had then been reoccupied in 2024 by people who knew, in broad terms, that planning permission was required and that the site had a substantial enforcement history.

The occupiers had also had the benefit of a fresh planning application and a full planning inquiry. The Inspector had already considered Traveller status, accommodation need, children, health, equality and Article 8 before dismissing the appeal.

The judge therefore concluded that a final injunction was both justified and proportionate.

The order also covers persons unknown

Somerset sought relief not only against the named defendants but also against persons unknown who might occupy, develop or use the land.

The court applied the safeguards in Wolverhampton City Council v London Gypsies and Travellers [2023] UKSC 47.

HHJ Siddique found a compelling need for the additional protection. Occupation had changed during the proceedings and the long history showed a real risk that an order limited only to named occupiers could be circumvented as people moved on and off the site.

The persons unknown element is territorially limited to Greenacres and is time-limited until 15th September 2027 unless extended by a further court order.

Greenacres must be vacated within three months

The court did not require immediate departure.

Residential occupation and use of Greenacres must cease within three months. HHJ Siddique considered that immediate compliance would impose disproportionate hardship, particularly given the presence of children, health difficulties and the problems of finding alternative Traveller accommodation.

A further month is allowed for the physical work. Unauthorised development, associated items and waste must be removed and the land reinstated within four months.

The named defendants were also ordered jointly and severally to pay Somerset Council’s costs of the High Court proceedings, subject to detailed assessment if not agreed. The judgment allows an individual defendant to apply within 28 days for a different costs order.

What the Greenacres traveller site judgment means

The striking feature is not simply that Somerset obtained an injunction. It is the sequence that came before it.

Ordinary enforcement had already been tried over many years. A previous injunction had eventually secured compliance. The same land was then reoccupied, another planning application was made, a full appeal was heard, the personal circumstances of the occupiers were weighed in that appeal, and only after the appeal was dismissed did the High Court determine the final section 187B claim.

The judgment reinforces three practical points:

• a section 187B injunction remains a discretionary court remedy, even where the underlying planning breach is established
• the court does not reopen planning merits that have already been determined through the statutory planning process
• hardship, Traveller status, Article 8, health and the welfare of children can materially affect proportionality and the time allowed for compliance, without necessarily preventing an injunction

For councils and landowners alike, Greenacres is a reminder that planning history matters. A breach that follows years of failed appeals and previous court enforcement will be viewed very differently from an isolated first breach.

Primary sources

Somerset Council v Peter Richards (Senior) & Ors [2026] EWHC 2401 (KB)

Planning appeal APP/E3335/W/25/3375539, Greenacres, Oxen Lane, North Curry, decision dated 1st June 2026 – the appeal decision is reproduced at pages 78 to 103 of Somerset Council’s committee pack

Costs decision for APP/E3335/W/25/3375539