Barstow v Green GEN Cymru: High Court clarifies land-entry survey powers for grid connection projects

The Planning Court has clarified the scope of the powers that acquiring authorities may use to enter and survey land before a compulsory purchase, ruling that a Welsh grid connection developer had relied on pro-forma notices that fell short of the statutory scheme.

In Barstow and others v Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Limited [2026] EWHC 1698 (Admin), Mr Justice Kimblin considered a challenge by a Powys occupier, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales and a grassroots coalition to the way the developer had exercised its rights under Part 7 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. The developer, an independent distribution network operator, is surveying route options for three 132kV connections between renewable schemes and the transmission network.

The core of the case turned on the construction of sections 172 and 174 of the 2016 Act. The judge held that notice under section 174 must be given to every owner and every occupier of the land, rejecting a disjunctive reading, and that the obstruction offence in section 177 reinforced that conclusion, since it would be unfair to expose an occupier to prosecution without notice. Service by ordinary post sufficed, however, and actual receipt need not be shown, so an occupier who recycled unopened post addressed to "the occupier" had still been validly served.

A notice did not run with the land, nor could it be given through an intermediary. More significantly for the developer's practice, the judge held that although section 174 does not require the first day of entry to be specified, a notice cannot be relied upon indefinitely. Its currency depends on the nature of the activity and the circumstances of the proposed entry, and a notice served a year before the disputed survey could not be relied upon. The requirement to enter only at a "reasonable time" under section 172 extended beyond the hour of the day to the timing, frequency, duration and impact of the entry, judged against the use of the land, including agricultural operations, livestock, disease controls such as bovine tuberculosis, and the personal circumstances of those affected.

Read with the statutory Code of Practice on powers of entry, the duty to give "details of what is proposed" required as much precision as was reasonably practicable about what would happen, where and when, together with an invitation to the occupier to raise site-specific concerns. The developer's generic notices and its blanket authorisations of contractors did less than that. In respect of the lead claimant, the court found that a valid notice had been given but did not comply with the Code, that the authorisations were unduly broad, and that surveyors had made a minor and inadvertent entry onto her land, which counsel accepted was unfortunate.

The claimants fared less well elsewhere. Challenges founded on biodiversity and livestock duties disclosed no public law error, the developer having deployed qualified ecologists, and the judge detected an air of unreality in that ground. On data protection, he declined to determine the claim, noting the Information Commissioner's role as the bespoke regulator, and held in any event that the processing was lawful under Article 6 of the UK GDPR as necessary to design and consent the scheme.

The judge granted six declarations recording his interpretation of Part 7 but refused any quashing order, which the claim had never sought and which would have been unfair to the developer. The claim being an Aarhus claim subject to costs capping, and success being mixed but tilted towards the claimants given the change they had secured in the developer's practice, they recovered 60% of their capped costs, amounting to £21,000.