(Queensland) The Board considered the compensation payable on the compulsory purchase of land for the purpose of an expressway between Brisbane and Combabah. At the date of compulsory acquisition the project had reached the stage where it was reasonable to assume that a strip of the appellant’s land would be acquired for the expressway. The Land Appeal Court assessed compensation on the basis that the value of the land was to be arrived at by adjusting the price paid by the appellant for it in the light of the proposal. The Full Court of the Supreme Court of Queensland took the view that the question of the status and effect of the expressway proposal raised issues of fact upon the valuation but no question of law.
Held: A failure to properly apply the Point Gourde principle did disclose a question of law. The Pointe Gourde principle is part of the ‘common law deriving as a matter of principle from the nature of compensation for resumption or compulsory acquisition.’ The principle operates both with respect to the consequential enhancement and adverse effect of a scheme for public works upon resumed land. A resuming authority cannot by its project of resumption destroy the potential for the highest and best use of the land and then resume land severing it from part of the previous holding, on the basis that the destroyed potential never existed. The principle remains applicable where planning permission is refused for development for the highest and best use of the whole of the land, because of the apprehended use of part of the land for a public purpose.
Lord Russell of Killowen said: ‘Under the principle in Point (sic) Gourde Quarrying and Transport Co Ltd v Sub-Intendent of Crown Lands [1947] A.C. 565 the landowner cannot claim compensation to the extent to which the value of his land is enhanced by the very scheme of which the resumption forms an integral part: that principle in their Lordships’ opinion operates also in reverse. A resuming authority cannot by its project of resumption destroy the potential of the [land to be resumed] and then resume and sever on the basis that the destroyed potential had never existed.’
(Queensland)
Judges:
Lord Russell of Killowen
Citations:
[1979] AC 426, [1978] UKPC 10
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Australia
Cited by:
Cited – Homes and Communities Agency v JS Bloor (Wilmslow) Ltd SC 22-Feb-2017
Challenge to the sums awarded on compulsory acquisition of grazing land, but which land had a substantial hope value for residential development.
Held: The tribunal’s application of these difficult provisions to the complex facts of this case . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Land, Damages, Commonwealth
Updated: 19 July 2022; Ref: scu.443340