One Nuisance For Another

The Court of Appeal has twice this year given judgments in the case Coventry and others v. Lawrence and another, first in February ("Coventry No. 1"; [2014] UKSC 13) and more recently in July ("Coventry No. 2"; [2014] UKSC 46).

The Facts

In the 1970s Mr Waters gained planning permission to construct on his farmland in Suffolk a motorcycle speedway stadium. The permission lasted for ten years, but was renewed in 1985. After the second permission was granted, the stadium was also used (without permission) for stock car and banger racing. Once ten years had elapsed, Mr Waters applied for, and in 1997 obtained, a Certificate of Lawfulness of Existing Use from the local authority. As a result, the use of the land for stock car and banger racing became lawful.

Wishing to expand the operation, in 2002 Mr Waters was granted permanent planning permission for a motocross racetrack in the fields adjacent to his existing stadium. Since 1992 he had been granted a series of temporary planning permissions for this activity, subject to certain conditions constraining the time of use of the land, and importantly a maximum noise level over any one hour period, measured at the boundary of the track.

Since 2008 Mr Coventry, a tenant of Mr Waters, and the other Respondent to the appeals had owned and operated both the stadium and the racetrack. In 2006, Ms Lawrence and Mr Shields, the Appellants, moved into a property 560 metres from the stadium, and 860 metres from the motocross racetrack.

They complained about the noise from both the stadium and racetrack, alleging that it affected their enjoyment of their property and constituted a nuisance. They first appealed to the local authority, which served noise abatement notices under a statutory procedure which deals with so-called "public" nuisances.

Not satisfied with the outcome, Ms Lawrence etc. issued a claim seeking an injunction to prevent future noise nuisance, and damages for the historic nuisance.

What is "Nuisance"?

As noted above, a nuisance may either be "public" or "private". The Coventry cases concerned private nuisance.

A private nuisance arises where a person commits an act on his own land which, although in itself lawful, becomes a nuisance when the result of his actions affect land belonging to his neighbour. A private nuisance may take many forms, ranging from damage caused to neighbouring foundations by tree roots to nuisance caused by noise or some physical disturbance, such as smoke or...