Newbury District Council v Secretary of State for the Environment; Newbury District Council v International Synthetic Rubber Co Ltd [1981] AC 578

Newbury is one of the foundation cases on planning conditions. The House of Lords confirmed the three classic legal limits on the apparently broad power to grant planning permission subject to conditions. A condition must serve a planning purpose, must fairly and reasonably relate to the development permitted, and must not be so unreasonable that no reasonable planning authority could have imposed it.

Neutral citation

[1981] AC 578; [1980] 2 WLR 379; [1980] 1 All ER 731

Court

House of Lords

Judgment date

28th February 1980

Judge

Viscount Dilhorne, Lord Edmund-Davies, Lord Fraser of Tullybelton, Lord Scarman and Lord Lane

What happened in Newbury

The case concerned two very large aircraft hangars built during the Second World War at Membury Airfield. After military flying ceased, the hangars were used for different forms of storage, including food supplies and civil defence vehicles.

In 1962 International Synthetic Rubber Co Ltd applied for permission to use the hangars as warehouses for storing synthetic rubber. Permission was granted subject to a condition requiring the buildings to be removed by 31st December 1972.

The company continued using the hangars after that date and Newbury District Council served enforcement notices requiring compliance with the demolition condition.

The dispute eventually reached the House of Lords.

The three Newbury tests

The speeches in Newbury confirm three familiar limits on a planning condition:

• the condition must be imposed for a planning purpose rather than an ulterior purpose
• the condition must fairly and reasonably relate to the development which has been permitted
• the condition must not be so unreasonable that no reasonable planning authority could have imposed it

Those principles remain part of modern planning law even though the statutory provisions considered in Newbury came from the Town and Country Planning Act 1971.

Our main guide explains the current approach to planning conditions, including the wider modern policy tests of necessity, enforceability and precision.

A planning purpose is not enough on its own

The council plainly had a planning objective in wanting the wartime hangars removed from open countryside. The problem was not that demolition was incapable of being a planning purpose.

The difficulty was the relationship between the condition and the particular development for which permission had been sought.

The 1962 application concerned the use of existing hangars for storing synthetic rubber. The condition went much further and required the substantial buildings themselves to be demolished.

The House of Lords held that, in the circumstances, the demolition requirement did not fairly and reasonably relate to the permitted change of use.

A condition cannot be used as a general shortcut to a wider planning objective

Newbury is therefore an important limit on the words allowing planning permission to be granted subject to such conditions as the authority thinks fit.

The condition has to attach lawfully to the development which the permission authorises. A council cannot simply use an application as an opportunity to secure some wider objective affecting the site where the necessary connection to the permitted development is missing.

That does not mean a condition can never require the later removal of a building or cessation of a use. Temporary permissions and restoration conditions can be entirely lawful. The relationship between the condition and the particular development is what matters.

The company did not actually need the 1962 permission

The House of Lords also concluded that the proposed warehouse use fell within the same historic use class as the previous storage use. In particular, the Home Office’s storage of civil defence vehicles amounted to use as a repository within the wording of the old Use Classes Order.

There had therefore been no material change of use requiring planning permission in 1962.

The details of the old Use Classes Order are historic, but the point illustrates a principle which still matters: obtaining a planning permission does not automatically prove that permission was legally necessary.

Existing use rights can survive an unnecessary permission

The council argued that because the company had applied for and used the 1962 permission, it could no longer rely on the earlier existing use rights.

The House of Lords rejected that proposition on the facts.

However, Newbury also recognises an important qualification. If implementing a later planning permission creates a genuinely new planning unit, existing use rights attached to the former planning unit can be extinguished.

That is a different question from saying that any permission automatically wipes away every pre-existing lawful use.

Newbury is the starting point, not the entire modern conditions test

The familiar modern policy formulation says planning conditions should be necessary, relevant to planning and to the development to be permitted, enforceable, precise and reasonable in all other respects.

Newbury is a central legal foundation for the planning-purpose, relationship and reasonableness parts of that approach. Later cases and national policy have developed the law further, particularly on necessity, precision and enforceability.

It is therefore better to treat Newbury as the foundation authority rather than assuming its three tests are the only questions that now matter when drafting a condition.

The Planning Geek copy is under rights review

Planning Geek holds a locally hosted copy of the judgment.

Gold Members can download the judgment below.

Related Planning Geek guidance

See our detailed guide to planning conditions. The historic storage use issue is also relevant background to the modern Use Class B8 storage and distribution page, although the use-class legislation considered in Newbury was very different from today’s Use Classes Order.

Newbury Case Law Page Updated: 10th September 2026