R (on the application of St Anselm Development Company Ltd) v First Secretary of State and Westminster City Council [2003] EWHC 1592 (Admin)
R (on the application of St Anselm Development Company Ltd) v First Secretary of State and Westminster City Council [2003] EWHC 1592 (Admin) concerned enforcement against particular parking spaces in a basement car park. The distinction was between a planning condition affecting the car park generally and the actual areas on which a breach had continued long enough to become immune from enforcement.
The litigation is frequently cited when a developer seeks a certificate of lawful use covering an entire site based on a ten-year breach affecting only identifiable parts. The later Court of Appeal judgment in Royale Parks [2021] EWCA Civ 1101 examines the reasoning in St Anselm. Planning Geek now holds the complete 11-page approved High Court judgment of Sullivan J, dated 16 June 2003. Its reasoning can be checked against the protected original available to Gold Members below.
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The basement car park and the planning condition
The dispute arose from a 1964 planning permission for a combined office and residential development at Clarges Street, Westminster. The basement car park had 19 numbered spaces. A condition required the car parking to be retained for vehicles associated with the occupiers and users of the rest of the building, subject to the council approving other use in writing.
Fourteen spaces had been let to outsiders continuously for longer than ten years. On the account reproduced in the reported judgment material, the council accepted that those particular spaces had become immune from enforcement. Five other spaces had not been used continuously by outsiders for that period, and Westminster City Council issued five enforcement notices directed at those spaces.
The claimant argued that the condition spoke about the whole car park and that, once a breach had occurred anywhere for ten years, the condition could no longer be enforced anywhere. The council maintained that the particular land affected by a breach mattered. The notices addressed identified spaces, not an indistinct car-park-wide use.
Why defining the affected land mattered
The High Court held that a breach which has become immune from enforcement on identifiable parking spaces does not automatically protect other spaces that had not been in breach for the required period. The statutory enforcement machinery must identify the particular failure and the remedial steps, rather than treating the condition as extinguished across the entire car park. A condition may govern a whole site, but the evidence of a breach and its duration may concern only specified pitches, spaces or plots.
In Royale Parks, the Court of Appeal considered an analogous problem involving holiday and residential occupation of caravan plots. It examined St Anselm while deciding whether breaches involving some identifiable caravans prevented enforcement of the relevant conditions elsewhere on the same site.
That reasoning is practically important for certificates of lawfulness. The relevant area should be identified precisely, and its particular history should be examined. Evidence that a prohibited activity happened at one point on a site is not necessarily evidence that it happened continuously throughout the land governed by the planning condition.
Later application in the Manchester parking appeals
Inspector R Merrett referred to St Anselm when considering appeals APP/B4215/X/26/3378566 and APP/B4215/X/26/3378567, decided on 6 November 2026. Those appeals also concerned basement parking spaces rented to non-residents. The Inspector concluded that the evidence justified certificates for three numbered spaces rather than for all the spaces claimed.
The Inspector considered monthly rental records, periods of vacancy, whether particular spaces were let to residents, and the continuity of non-resident use. This is the kind of space-by-space analysis for which St Anselm remains relevant. The Manchester decision is an Inspector’s decision, not a later court judgment modifying St Anselm.
Planning Geek’s change of use guidance provides background to assessing whether a particular activity amounts to development, while the planning enforcement guidance explains why the relevant statutory time limit and the evidence of actual use matter.
Decision and full judgment
Sullivan J dismissed the section 289 appeal against the five enforcement notices. The claimant was ordered to pay the First Secretary of State’s costs, summarily assessed at £5,270. The judgment turns on the particular breach specified by each notice and the operation of the enforcement time limit, not on treating every parking or caravan space as a separate planning unit in every case.
Planning Geek holds the complete 11-page court-approved transcript of the judgment dated 16 June 2003. The original is accessible to Gold Members through the protected download below.