North Devon District Council v The First Secretary of State [2003] EWHC 157 (Admin)

North Devon children’s home case is an important High Court authority on the boundary between Use Class C3(b) and C2 where children are cared for by staff working shifts.

The court held that children who require full-time adult care cannot by themselves form the sort of functioning household contemplated by C3(b). Non-resident rota carers do not become part of that household simply because staff are present around the clock. But the court also made a second point that is just as important: falling outside C3 and within C2 does not automatically mean that planning permission is required, because material change of use remains a separate question of fact and degree.

Neutral citation

[2003] EWHC 157 (Admin)

Court

High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, Administrative Court

Judgment date

30th January 2003

Judge

Mr Justice Collins

Case number

CO/4245/02

What happened in North Devon?

The case concerned a semi-detached three-bedroom house in Barnstaple used by Southern Childcare Ltd as a residential home for two children aged between 10 and 17.

Two members of staff were on duty at all times. The care team comprised six or seven adults working eight-hour shifts, but none of the carers lived at the property.

Southern Childcare applied for a lawful development certificate. North Devon District Council refused it, but a Planning Inspector allowed the appeal. The council then challenged the Inspector’s decision in the High Court.

Children alone could not form the C3(b) household

Mr Justice Collins considered what “living together as a single household” meant in the context of C3(b).

The court accepted the Inspector’s starting point that a household in these circumstances needed more than the children themselves. The children required full-time adult care and could not be expected to run the home or deal with the ordinary matters involved in maintaining a household.

Where people are unable to function as a household without care, the carer is part of what makes the household work. For C3(b), that meant a carer needed genuinely to live with those receiving care rather than merely attend the property to work.

Shift workers were not resident carers

The fact that care was available continuously did not mean the carers were “living together” with the children. They worked shifts and had their homes elsewhere.

Collins J therefore concluded that the use did not fall within C3(b). On the statutory wording then in force, it fell within C2.

The judge expressly disagreed with the earlier approach in R v Bromley London Borough Council, ex parte Sinclair [1991] 3 PLR 60, which had accepted that non-resident rota carers did not prevent the residents themselves forming the household. The later Crawley [2004] EWHC 160 (Admin) judgment then clarified that North Devon was fact-specific and did not create a universal resident-carer rule.

C2 did not automatically mean a material change of use

This is the part of North Devon that is easily missed.

The court did not say that identifying the use as C2 automatically meant planning permission was required. Use classes determine whether a change is automatically excluded from development, but a movement between different classes still has to amount to a material change of use before planning permission is needed.

Materiality therefore remained a separate planning judgement based on the facts. The Inspector had considered the residential character of the property and the arguments put forward about matters such as traffic, effects on the surrounding area and demands arising from the use.

Although Collins J would have preferred fuller reasoning, he held that the Inspector had been entitled to conclude that the change was not material.

The council won the C3 point but lost the case

The High Court therefore reached a slightly unusual result.

The council was right that the Inspector had wrongly placed the use within C3(b). Collins J held that C3 required at least one resident carer living with the people receiving care.

However, on the facts of this particular property, the Inspector was still entitled to find that there had been no material change of use. The children’s home use was therefore lawful and the council’s challenge was dismissed.

That distinction matters. North Devon is not authority for the proposition that every children’s home staffed by shifts is lawful without planning permission. It is authority for separating the use-class question from the material-change question.

Why North Devon still matters

The precise wording of the Use Classes Order has been amended since 2003, but the resident-carer and household reasoning remains influential.

A recent example is the 2026 Redbridge Hall Road care home appeal. There the Inspector relied on North Devon to separate the C2/C3(b) classification question from the material-change question, ultimately granting a lawful development certificate despite finding that the proposed use fell within C2.

Planning Geek’s guides to Use Class C3 dwellinghouses, Use Class C2 residential institutions and lawful development certificate appeals explain the wider planning framework.

Read the full North Devon judgment

The full Smith Bernal Wordwave transcript, prepared by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Court, is held locally in the Planning Geek case law library. Gold Members can open the protected PDF below.

North Devon Children’s Home Case Law Page Updated: 29th September 2026