Welwyn Hatfield Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Mr Alan Beesley [2010] EWCA Civ 26
Welwyn Hatfield Court of Appeal is the 2010 stage of the well-known Beesley hay-barn case. The Court of Appeal held that Mr Beesley was entitled to a certificate of lawfulness after living for more than four years in a building deliberately disguised and permitted as a hay barn.
This was not the final word. The Supreme Court reversed the decision in 2011 on the basis of deliberate deception and public policy. The Supreme Court judgment is the authority to use for the final legal position.
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- Neutral citation
- [2010] EWCA Civ 26
- Court
- Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
- Judgment date
- 29th January 2010
- Judge
- Lord Justice Pill, Lord Justice Mummery and Lord Justice Richards
- Case number
- C1/2009/1167 and C1/2009/1156
What Welwyn Hatfield Court of Appeal decided
Mr Beesley obtained planning permission for a hay barn in the Green Belt, subject to an agricultural-use condition. He had always intended to build and occupy a home. The completed building looked externally like a barn but was fitted out internally as a dwelling, and he and his wife lived there continuously from August 2002.
In August 2006 he applied for a certificate of lawfulness on the basis that the former four-year enforcement period had expired.
The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and restored the Inspector’s decision granting the certificate.
The building operation itself was unauthorised
Applying Sage, Richards LJ held that what had actually been built was a dwellinghouse, not the hay barn for which planning permission had been granted. Looking at the physical and design features as a whole, the internal residential fit-out meant the building operation was not carried out in accordance with the permission.
The former four-year operational-development limit therefore applied, and the construction had become immune from enforcement before the certificate application.
The Court of Appeal also found a change of use to a dwellinghouse
The permission authorised agricultural storage. Use of the completed building as a single dwellinghouse was a different use and was treated as a change of use for the former section 171B(2) regime.
Richards LJ rejected the argument that there could be no change of use because the building had never actually been used for storing hay. The permitted use provided the relevant starting point, and he also considered that a change from no use to residential use could amount to the relevant change.
The Court of Appeal did not resolve the deception point
The extraordinary feature of the case was the deliberate deceit. Mr Beesley admitted that he had applied for a hay barn while always intending a dwelling.
Mummery LJ questioned whether general principles such as fraud, illegality and the rule against profiting from one’s own wrong should prevent reliance on the statutory time limits. But those matters had not been argued before the court and the Court of Appeal did not decide the case on that basis.
Richards LJ considered the statutory entitlement to a certificate to depend on objectively ascertainable facts under the legislation as it then stood.
The Supreme Court reversed this result
In 2011 the Supreme Court allowed Welwyn Hatfield Council’s appeal. It held that the deliberate, positive deception was sufficiently exceptional to prevent Mr Beesley relying on the statutory immunity provisions.
For the final authority, read Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government v Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council [2011] UKSC 15.
The same Supreme Court reasoning was then applied to the straw-bale house in Fidler [2011] EWCA Civ 1159.
Historic time limits are not current English deadlines
The judgment repeatedly discusses the former four-year limits for operational development and changes of use to a single dwellinghouse. Those historic periods should not be copied into current advice.
See our guide to current planning enforcement time limits and our page on a planning enforcement order.
Read the full Welwyn Hatfield 2010 judgment
The full Court of Appeal judgment is held in the Planning Geek case law library. Gold Members can open the protected PDF below.
Welwyn Hatfield Court Of Appeal Case Law Page Updated: 9th September 2026