Howard v Secretary of State: CA 1975

A notice of appeal was given against an enforcement notice, under the Act which required that an appeal should be made by notice in writing to the minister, ‘which shall indicate the grounds of the appeal and state the facts on which it is based’. Failure to submit a valid notice of appeal within the permitted time limit would result in the enforcement notice taking effect and any right to challenge it being lost. A notice of appeal was served in time, but it failed to state either grounds or facts. A subsequent letter gave the necessary information, but was not posted until after the period had elapsed.
Held: Although the requirement for a written notice of appeal was mandatory, the requirement to set out the grounds and the facts was directory only. ‘The machinery of the enforcement provisions and the appeal therefrom simply would not work unless there were some fixed time put in section 16(1) to limit the time in which an appeal is to be brought. That provision is therefore imperative or mandatory and a failure to appeal within the time there limited clearly goes to the jurisdiction. The provisions of subsection (2) requiring the notice to indicate the grounds of appeal and to state the facts on which it is based appear to me to be more in the nature of procedural matters which are directory and do not go to the jurisdiction.’

Judges:

Stamp LJ

Citations:

[1975] QB 235

Statutes:

Town and Country Planning Act 1968 16(1)

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Cited by:

CitedM25 Group Limited v Tudor and others CA 4-Dec-2003
Tenants served notices under the Act requiring information about the disposal of the freehold. The landlords objected that the notices were invalid in failing to give the tenants’ addresses as required under the Act.
Held: The addresses were . .
CitedKay-Green and Others v Twinsectra Limited CA 15-May-1996
The former landlord had sold a number of buildings, some of which fell within Part I of the 1987 Act. The section 5 notice had not been served. The vendor had also failed to comply with his duty (under s 5(5)) to ‘sever’ the transaction, and sell . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.

Planning

Updated: 13 May 2022; Ref: scu.194055