PLANNING officials did not act with malice towards a builder who claimed his life was “ruined” as a result of a long-running dispute over windows installed in an historic building – but their handling of his case was “less than competent”, the Royal Court has ruled.
Michael John Neville – who had a business buying, refurbishing and reselling properties – took eight public officials and the States Employment Board to court accusing them of “misfeasance in public office”.
While Jurats unanimously rejected his complaints, their judgment was critical of the apparent lack of communication within the department, failures to properly review case files, and a general absence of procedures during the controversial enforcement case dating back to 2007.
Mr Neville was previously handed an enforcement notice, and eventually convicted, for placing uPVC windows on two listed properties he had bought in Devonshire Place in 2007. Unplasticised Polyvinyl Chloride (uPVC) is a low-maintenance building material used as a substitute for painted wood.
Mr Neville was found guilty in the Magistrate’s Court in 2010 of breaching planning legislation and fined £1,000.
He later successfully appealed against this conviction and subsequently brought legal action against planning officers and a host of other public officials, with a trial taking place in February this year. The court was asked to consider whether the officers conspired to serve an enforcement notice that was wrong, and their judgment was made public for the first time at the end of last week.
During the trial, the prosecution sought to portray the defendants as acting “out of some personal animosity towards” Mr Neville.
Giving evidence, Mr Neville said that he had to remortgage his home and he had “lost everything” following his conviction.
The case was described as “extremely important to all the parties involved and to the public of Jersey”.
The allegations were “strongly refuted” by the defence, which stated that while it was “not in dispute that the department was not perfect”, there had been a “a lawful basis for enforcement and prosecution” and the “high threshold” for misfeasance in public office had not been reached.
Rejecting Mr Neville’s allegations against the nine defendants, including the States Employment Board, Jurats said that they inferred that the case had been brought so the complainant “could vent his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Planning Department had dealt with a number of his applications”.
Jurats highlighted that there had been a number of other avenues available to Mr Neville to challenge the department.
The court was however critical of planning officers, commenting that there “appears to have been little communication amongst personnel even when it became apparent that the plaintiff was suffering a great deal of stress over the matter”.
Jurats also concluded that officers did not read Mr Neville’s file properly, that prosecutors failed to “consider the matter properly” and the Planning Department failed to ensure an advocate in the case was “fully instructed”.
A 2010 report was also highlighted in the court judgment which found that at that time Planning had “almost no procedures in place in relation to the manner in which the enforcement officers should discharge their functions or how their work should relate to the main operation of the Planning Department”.
“We assume that those matters have now been remedied and that there are better procedures in place to ensure that communication between staff in the Planning Department is more effective than described above,” the judgment read.
The issue of costs will be dealt with at a later date.
The defendants
First defendant – Keith Bray, former Planning Enforcement Officer
Second defendant – Jerry Bolton, former Planning Enforcement Officer
Third defendant – Andrew Scate, then-chief executive of the Planning and Environment Department
Fourth defendant – Daniel Scaife, former Chef de Police of the Parish of St Helier
Fifth defendant – Advocate Robin Morris, employed as a legal adviser in the Law Officers’ Department
Sixth defendant – Tracey Ingle, employed as head of the Historic Buildings Department at Planning and Environment
Seventh defendant – Peter Le Gresley, former assistant director of the Planning and Environment Department
Eighth defendant – Marion Jones, employed at the Planning and Environment Department
Ninth defendant – the States Employment Board
