Blackbushe Airport Limited v R (on the application of Hampshire County Council) & Ors [2021] EWCA Civ 398
Blackbushe Airport is a leading Court of Appeal judgment on the meaning of curtilage. The court rejected the idea that land falls within the curtilage of a building simply because the land and building operate together as one functional unit. The question is narrower: is the land so intimately associated with the building that it can properly be regarded as part and parcel of that building?
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- Neutral citation
- [2021] EWCA Civ 398
- Court
- Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
- Judgment date
- 18th March 2021
- Judge
- Lady Justice King, Lady Justice Andrews and Lord Justice Nugee
- Case number
- C1/2020/0882
What Blackbushe Airport decided
The case concerned about 115 acres forming most of the operational area of Blackbushe Airport in Hampshire. The land had been registered as common land. Blackbushe Airport Limited sought to remove it from the register under provisions applying where land had historically been covered by a building or had been within the curtilage of a building.
The relevant building was the airport terminal, with a footprint of about 360 square metres. An Inspector concluded that the operational airfield was within the terminal building’s curtilage because the land and building formed an integral operational unit.
Holgate J quashed that decision. The Court of Appeal agreed and dismissed the airport company’s appeal.
The part-and-parcel test is the correct test
The Court of Appeal confirmed the approach in Methuen-Campbell v Walters. For land to be within the curtilage of a building, it must be so intimately associated with the building that the land can properly be regarded as forming part and parcel of it.
That does not mean the land literally becomes part of the physical structure. It describes the closeness of the relationship required before a reference to the building would naturally be understood as including the land around it.
Whether that relationship exists is a question of fact and degree.
A shared function or planning unit is not enough
The Inspector had asked whether the airport land and the terminal building formed an integral whole and were functionally interdependent. That was the wrong question.
The statutory question was whether the land fell within the curtilage of the building. It was not whether the land and building together formed the operational airport.
The judgment is therefore a useful warning against confusing curtilage with a wider planning unit, ownership boundary or operational site.
Functional necessity does not decide curtilage
The terminal building needed the airfield in order to function as an airport terminal. But that did not make 115 acres of runway, taxiways, fuel storage and operational land part of the terminal building’s curtilage.
The court observed that the relationship actually worked the other way round. The terminal building was ancillary to the airport operation rather than the operational land being ancillary to the terminal building.
Convenience, shared purpose and functional dependence can be relevant background, but none is a substitute for the part-and-parcel test.
Curtilage does not always have to be small
Blackbushe also brings together many of the earlier curtilage authorities. The Court of Appeal rejected any absolute rule that curtilage must always be small.
The size of a curtilage will depend on the building and the circumstances. A substantial country house may have a larger curtilage than a modest cottage. Relative size can still be highly relevant, particularly where the area claimed is vastly greater than the building it is said to belong to.
The court described curtilage as one of those concepts that is easier to recognise in real examples than to capture in a single exhaustive definition.
There is one curtilage concept across planning contexts
The Court of Appeal rejected the suggestion that listed-building cases use a fundamentally different and wider meaning of curtilage. The same underlying concept applies, although statutory context and the particular facts can influence how the test is applied.
The case reviews Methuen-Campbell, Dyer, Calderdale, the separate February 2000 Skerritts curtilage judgment and Challenge Fencing, among others.
Why the airport land was plainly outside the curtilage
The terminal building occupied only a tiny part of the 115-acre operational area. The runway and the rest of the airport could not naturally be described as part and parcel of the terminal building.
Lady Justice Andrews said that asking whether the whole operational airport was one functioning unit had led the Inspector away from the statutory question. Lord Justice Nugee agreed that the relationship bore very little resemblance to established examples of land held to be within a building’s curtilage.
Read the full Blackbushe Airport judgment
The approved Court of Appeal judgment is held in the Planning Geek case law library. Gold Members can open the protected PDF below.
Related Planning Geek guidance
Our main practical guide is Curtilage: what is it?. The judgment is also relevant when considering the extended protection given to structures within the curtilage of a listed building.
Blackbushe Airport Case Law Page Updated: 9th September 2026