Maidstone Borough Council v Fred King: suspended sentence for planning injunction contempt

Mr Justice Griffiths has sentenced Fred King to six months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, after finding him in continuing contempt of court for breaching two injunctions requiring him to cease residential use of a green field site in Sandway, Maidstone, and remove caravans, mobile homes and vehicles from it.

The judgement, handed down in the King's Bench Division on 29 July 2026, followed committal proceedings brought by Maidstone Borough Council over breaches of an interim order made in October 2022 and a final order made in December 2024. Both orders restricted the use of land known as Warren Lands, an open countryside site adjacent to the Sandway Conservation Area, where the council's planning enforcement team had documented the arrival of mobile homes, touring caravans and a steel building frame in defiance of a 1991 enforcement notice.

The final order required Mr King to remove all mobile homes, caravans and vehicles from the site within one month and hardstanding within three months. His applications for planning permission, including a proposal to use the site as accommodation for an extended Gypsy/Traveller family, were consistently refused by the council and dismissed on appeal by a planning inspector, who found the development harmful to the rural landscape, the conservation area and a nearby special area of conservation, and concluded that Mr King's personal circumstances did not justify a temporary permission.

Mr King had earlier admitted breaching both orders at a hearing before Tom Little KC in April 2026, but site visits in June 2026 found continuing non-compliance, including a new mobile home, additional touring caravans, several vehicles and further hardstanding. Mr Justice Griffiths rejected an argument that those earlier admissions should limit the factual basis for sentencing, holding that admissions in committal proceedings are not equivalent to an agreed basis of plea and that the court retains its own duty to establish the facts relevant to penalty.

The judge found that Mr King remained in de facto control of the site throughout, that he had the ability to comply with the orders, and that his failure to do so amounted to a deliberate contempt rather than an unavoidable one, notwithstanding his evidence of housing difficulties and health problems. The judgement noted an aggravating history: a suspended sentence imposed in 2018 for similar breaches of planning control on a separate site enforced by a different local authority.

Shortly before sentencing, Mr King made his first genuine attempt to comply, seeking to relocate a caravan occupied by his daughter-in-law and grandchildren, an effort that ended in a confrontation with family members after the caravan was damaged during the move. The judge accepted this as evidence of a late but genuine shift towards compliance and factored it into a reduction from an initial nine-month term.

The sentence combines punitive and coercive elements of three months each. If Mr King fully complies with the outstanding requirements of the final order within six months, the coercive element will be discharged and the remainder will continue to be suspended. Failure to comply will result in immediate custody, with the council separately indicating it will use its own enforcement powers under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to secure removal of the site's remaining occupants within a similar timeframe.