Town centre suffering from serious traffic congestion - defendant council attempting to ease congestion by imposing parking restrictions - council unsure of land ownership so unable to use provisions of Highways Act 1980 - council proceeding by way of Harbours Act 1964 - whether such action open to judicial review - claim dismissed

R (on the application of Richards) v Pembrokeshire County Council: QBD (Mr Justice Moses): 9 October 2003

The claimant owned one of three properties that were separated from a harbour by a raised terrace.

The defendant council did not know who owned the terrace, but the owners of the adjacent properties had always understood that they had the right to park their cars on it and they had erected barriers to prevent members of the general public from parking there.

The defendant council was aware that they had done so and had not attempted to prevent it.

To address parking problems in the town centre, the council informed the claimant that the terrace would be marked out into parking bays, and that parking would be open to any residents in the area by way of parking permits.

Knowing that the ownership of the land was a matter of some dispute, the council relied on the Harbours Act 1964, rather than the Highways Act 1980; it was common ground that the terrace was included in the harbour area.

However, the claimant claimed that the council was acting outside its powers in proceeding under the 1964 Act, since the purpose of the decision was to ease congestion in the town centre, whereas the purpose of the 1964 Act was to regulate activities in the area of, and pertinent to, the harbour itself.

Vivian Chapman (instructed by John Collins & Partners, Swansea) for the claimant; Rhodri Williams (instructed by the solicitor to Pembrokeshire County Council) for the defendants.

Held: The claim was dismissed.

The purpose of the 1964 Act was to regulate traffic within the harbour area.

Thus, the council could exercise such power only for the benefit of the harbour, not for the town centre.

However, given that the town had been built around the harbour, and that the harbour facilities attracted a high proportion of the traffic in the town centre, the management of the town-centre traffic had a direct effect on the harbour traffic.

In particular, access to the lifeboat station and specific harbour traffic, such as container lorries, were affected by congestion in the town centre.

Accordingly, the council was entitled to use the powers in the 1964 Act to deal with traffic flow, and this extended to the provision of parking bays on the terrace.

The council's actions were not Wednesbury unreasonable and were not subject to judicial review.