Law Report: Case summaries 16 march 1998

THE FOLLOWING notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Confiscation order

R v City of London Justices, ex p Chapman; QBD (Div Ct)(Pill LJ, Gage J) 5 March 1998.

Since the scheme of the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986 was to make sentences in default to be served consecutively, where a judge had ordered that the time for payment of a confiscation order was to be the length of a defendant's prison sentence, the default sentence came into effect on the date on which the defendant was released on licence and not the date on which the sentence was due to be completed had there been no parole. This problem would be avoided by judges' stating a specific date by which payment was to be made when making confiscation orders under s 6(1) of the 1986 Act.

Timothy Sewell (Saunders & Co) for the applicant; Kennedy Talbot (Customs & Excise solicitor) for the interested party.

Planning

Snowdonia National Park Authority v Georgeson; QBD (Div Ct)(Pill LJ, Gage J) 9 March 1998.

Where a person had appealed to the Secretary of State against an enforcement notice under s 175(5) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, he could not, at the hearing of an information laid against him for failure to comply with that notice, claim that an alleged defect in its service rendered the enforcement notice invalid.

Andrew Thomas (Sharpe Pritchard & Co, for Conway Borough Council) for the appellant; the respondent did not appear and was not represented.

Torridge District Council v Jarrad; QBD (Div Ct)(Pill LJ, Gage J) 11 March 1998.

There was no room for the application of a defence under s171B(3) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 where an information had been laid alleging a breach of the Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisement) Regulations 1992, since those regulations provided a code for the control of advertisements which did not depend on a breach of planning control under Part VII of the 1990 Act, and the defence in s171B(3) could only be used where the breach complained of was contained in that part of the Act.

Timothy Corner (Bazeley Barnes & Bazeley, Bideford) for the appellant; the respondent did not appear and was not represented.