Public health

Health authority serving abatement notice on water undertaker to cease discharge of sewage into estuary - river or estuary not 'watercourse' - notice invalidR v Falmouth and Truro Health Authority, ex parte South West Water Ltd: CA (Simon Brown, Pill and Hale LJJ): 30 March 2000

The health authority served an abatement notice on the water undertaker requiring it to cease discharging sewage into part of the Fal estuary.

The water undertaker applied for judicial review of the decision to serve the notice.

The judge granted the application.

The health authority appealed.Richard Gordon QC and Martin Diggins (instructed by Toller Beattie, Barnstaple) for the health authority.

Philip Havers QC and David Hart (instructed by Kenneth Woodier, Exeter) for the water company.Held, dismissing the appeal, that the term 'watercourse' in s.259(1)(a) of the Public Health Act 1936 did not include a river or estuary; that consequently an abatement notice served by an enforcing health authority on a water undertaker requiring it to cease discharging sewage into part of an estuary was not valid; that an enforcing authority was not under a duty to consult the alleged perpetrator of a statutory nuisance before serving an abatement notice on it; that the failure of an enforcing authority to specify the works required to abate the nuisance did not invalidate an abatement notice; that permission to seek judicial review should rarely be given in a case concerning public safety where the applicant had a statutory right of appeal; and that, accordingly, the health authority had acted outside its powers in serving the notice on the water company.