Blackpool Borough Council v Beale: injunction granted despite council's breach of the public sector equality duty

A local planning authority that failed to comply with the public sector equality duty at three separate stages of enforcement action has nonetheless obtained a permanent injunction requiring two Romani Gypsy families to leave land they own and reinstate it, the court holding that proper compliance would not have produced a substantially different decision.

In Blackpool Borough Council v Beale [2026] EWHC 2237 (KB), handed down on 28 August 2026, His Honour Judge Stephen Davies, sitting as a High Court Judge, granted relief under section 187B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 against the first and third defendants, allowing 21 days to vacate rather than the 14 sought. An undertaking in modified terms was accepted from the second defendant, who has never occupied the land. The claim against persons unknown failed.

The defendants bought the land in the Marton Moss area in 2022, an area designated as open land, within a conservation area and covered by a neighbourhood plan. Clearance began within weeks. Pre-application advice in late 2022 indicated that a proposal for bungalows would be recommended for refusal. Hardcore, services and footings followed, an enforcement notice was issued in 2024, and the appeal against it was dismissed in December 2025. Two families moved caravans onto the site shortly after the compliance deadline expired. A fresh application for four permanent pitches was made in June 2026 and remains undetermined.

Where the duty was not discharged

The judgement is unsparing about the council's approach to section 149 of the Equality Act 2010. No equality impact assessment was carried out before the enforcement notice, before the interim injunction application, or before the decision to pursue a final injunction. The head of legal services made no reference to the defendants' ethnicity, to the 2010 Act or to the duty in her statement, and the judge found her evidence that she had consciously assessed the position undocumented and unpersuasive. Since the duty is continuing, there was a positive obligation to reassess once the defendants' witness statements set out their circumstances in detail for the first time.

Applying Forward v Aldwyck Housing Group [2019] EWCA Civ 1334, breach does not automatically defeat the claim. The question is whether it is highly likely the decision would not have been substantially different, and the court held it was. By the relevant stage the defendants were legally represented and able to articulate their position fully. Their evidence about alternative options was found deeply unsatisfactory and without corroboration, one defendant having a family pitch available elsewhere in Lancashire. The accommodation needs assessment for the Fylde Coast disclosed no significant unmet need, and a serviced site with unused permitted pitches lay a few miles away. Set against that were the flagrancy of the breaches and the finding that planning permission is extremely unlikely, an appeal from refusal potentially adding eleven months of continuing harm.

The court drew on the principles distilled by Holgate J in Ipswich Borough Council v Fairview Hotels [2022] EWHC 2868 (KB) from South Buckinghamshire District Council v Porter, and accepted, following Chapman v United Kingdom, that occupation of a caravan engages ethnic identity as well as the home. Children's best interests were treated as a primary consideration under ZH (Tanzania) but were outweighed, there being no evidence tying the children to that particular locality beyond proximity to extended family.

A procedural point of practical significance also emerged. The council's head of development management had not been permitted to give expert planning evidence, and her opinions on planning judgement and on the prospects of the pending application were left out of account, though her evidence on policy and on matters of hard analysis was admissible.

Relief against persons unknown was refused under Wolverhampton City Council v London Gypsies and Travellers [2023] UKSC 47. There was no compelling need, no basis for fearing incursion by unconnected occupiers, and the order against the named defendants already prohibits them from permitting others to develop the land.