An Enforcement Notice alleged unauthorised use of land as a timber storage and transfer area. The land so used was 1500 metres from forestry plantations. The appellant argued that it was concerned with ‘the use of land for the purposes of forestry’ and that therefore development was not involved. This was rejected by the reporter on the grounds that the land against which the Enforcement Notice was directed was so physically divorced from the forest that he could not regard it as ‘an operation or use ancillary to forestry and I consider it rather to be a use of industrial character’.
Held: ‘The cultivating of forests and the management of growing timber would include the felling of trees and the extraction of the timber from plantations. There would be little point in cultivating or managing forests unless the fruits of the operation in the sense of the felled timber were to be taken away from the plantation for commercial purposes. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the extraction of timber is included in the general term forestry. . . . In the light of the findings which the reporter has made in the present case, it is plain that, if timber were to be extracted from these plantations, there was no alternative to the movement of timber on the road through the village and that the use of the subjects described in the Enforcement Notice for stock piling timber extracted from the forest and transferring it onto the lorries was functionally essential to the running of these plantations commercially. That being so, we are satisfied that at the material time the subjects referred to in the Enforcement Notice were being used for the purposes of forestry. …….. In our opinion it does not matter that the subject s referred to in the Enforcement Notice were situated some 1500 metres from the plantations; what is important is not the fact that the subjects were physically divorced from the plantation but the use to which the subjects were being put.’
Citations:
[1992] 2PLR 123
Statutes:
Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972
Cited by:
Cited – Millington v Secretary of State for Environment Transport and Regions v Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council CA 25-Jun-1999
The fact that a new product was made on agricultural land from produce grown elsewhere on the land did not make that production process non-agricultural. The making of wine is capable of being agricultural use, and being thus free from planning . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Planning, Scotland
Updated: 30 April 2022; Ref: scu.229044