Captain Lee Jones v Shropshire Council [2025] EWHC 365 (Admin)
Jones v Shropshire is an important case on CIL enforcement and the reach of a CIL stop notice. The High Court held that the six-year limitation period which can prevent a council from bringing court proceedings to recover an old statutory debt does not apply to the separate administrative power to issue a CIL stop notice under regulation 90 of the Community Infrastructure Levy Regulations 2010.
Important legal note: Planning Geek is a planning consultancy, not a law firm. This page provides general planning information and is not legal advice. Case law must be read in its factual and legal context and may be affected by later judgments, legislation or policy. Where the original judgment is available, it remains the authoritative source. If the outcome matters to a live case or dispute, take advice from an appropriately qualified planning solicitor or barrister.
Copyright and licensing: Crown copyright and other rights in judgments and source material remain with the relevant rights holders. Where a judgment is reproduced from Find Case Law, it is used under the Open Justice Licence and the source should be acknowledged. Material obtained from other sources is reproduced only where the applicable terms permit it. Planning Geek does not claim copyright in the text of court judgments.
- Neutral citation
- [2025] EWHC 365 (Admin)
- Court
- High Court of Justice, King's Bench Division, Administrative Court, Planning Court
- Judgment date
- 21st February 2025
- Judge
- Mr Justice Mould
- Case number
- AC-2024-LON-001634
What Jones v Shropshire decided
The case concerned a detached house and garage at Mayfield Farm near Ellesmere. Planning permission had been granted in 2015 and the development had started, but remained incomplete many years later.
Shropshire Council said just under £40,000 of CIL remained unpaid. In September 2022 it issued a CIL stop notice requiring building works to cease until the outstanding sum was paid.
Captain Jones argued that the council was too late. More than six years had passed since the CIL became due in August 2015.
The High Court dismissed the challenge.
A liability order does have a six-year deadline
The CIL Regulations provide several different enforcement routes. One is an application to the magistrates’ court for a liability order.
Regulation 97(3) expressly prevents a liability order application being started more than six years after the outstanding amount became due.
That mattered in the history of this case. An earlier liability order had been overturned and, by then, Shropshire could no longer make a fresh application because the regulation 97 six-year period had expired.
A CIL stop notice is a different enforcement power
A CIL stop notice is not an application to a court for an order to recover money. It is an administrative notice issued directly by the collecting authority under regulations 89 and 90.
Before issuing one, the council must have an unpaid CIL amount and consider it expedient that development should stop until payment is made. A warning notice must first be served. If the amount remains unpaid, the authority may then serve the stop notice.
The purpose is deliberately coercive. The developer is prevented from carrying on with the chargeable development until the unpaid CIL is addressed.
Our main guide explains the wider CIL enforcement regime.
The Limitation Act did not apply to the administrative notice
Captain Jones relied on section 9(1) of the Limitation Act 1980. That section provides a six-year limit for an action to recover a sum recoverable by statute.
Mr Justice Mould held that, in the context of the Limitation Act, an action means legal proceedings brought in a court or tribunal. The Act can apply to different forms of litigation, even where they are not technically ordinary civil claims.
Issuing a CIL stop notice is different. It is an administrative act by the collecting authority and does not depend on bringing proceedings before a court or tribunal.
Section 9 therefore did not impose a six-year limit on Shropshire’s power to issue the notice.
The court did not invent a new time limit
The judgment contrasts the express six-year limit Parliament placed on CIL liability orders with the absence of an equivalent fixed period for CIL stop notices.
The court declined to read an additional time limit into regulation 90. The statutory scheme gave councils a separate administrative enforcement tool which could continue to be available when the route to a fresh liability order had closed.
That does not give councils an unlimited free hand
The absence of a fixed six-year bar does not mean an old CIL stop notice decision is immune from scrutiny.
The authority must still satisfy the regulation 89 requirement that it considers it expedient for development to stop until the unpaid amount is paid. It must give reasons in the warning notice and stop notice.
A decision to use the power remains subject to judicial review. The judge gave the example of a very old, modest residual sum being pursued after nearly all the development had been completed. In an appropriate case, the expediency of issuing a stop notice might be challenged on ordinary public law grounds.
The statutory appeal against a CIL stop notice is narrow
Regulation 119 provides a statutory appeal, but only on limited grounds. Broadly, the appeal can address a failure to serve the required warning notice or the contention that the chargeable development had not commenced.
Other public law complaints about the council’s decision may therefore need to be pursued promptly through judicial review rather than assuming the statutory appeal can deal with every issue.
The case was not a ruling on whether the underlying CIL debt was correct
The litigation had a long history involving the self-build exemption, commencement, a surcharge, a statutory appeal and an earlier liability order.
The issue before Mr Justice Mould in this judgment was much narrower: whether section 9 of the Limitation Act made the September 2022 CIL stop notice time-barred.
The answer was no. The court did not need to decide the separate question whether issuing the notice was itself an action to recover the sum, because it had already concluded that it was not an action within the meaning of the Limitation Act.
Why Jones v Shropshire matters
The case is especially useful where old CIL remains unpaid and the normal court recovery route may be approaching or beyond its statutory time limit.
It confirms that the different CIL enforcement mechanisms should not be treated as interchangeable. A limitation applying to one route does not automatically transfer to another.
For developers, the practical lesson is equally important: the expiry of the six-year liability-order period does not necessarily mean the collecting authority has lost every means of enforcing unpaid CIL while development remains incomplete.
Read the full Jones v Shropshire judgment
The approved Planning Court judgment is held in the Planning Geek case law library. Gold Members can open the protected PDF below.
Related Planning Geek guidance
See CIL Enforcement: Stop Notices, Liability Orders and Recovery and our wider CIL FAQ.
Jones v Shropshire Case Law Page Updated: 9th September 2026