The High Court has provisionally set €10,000, plus VAT if properly recoverable, as the amount Guessford Ltd may offset against costs awarded to nine applicants in planning enforcement proceedings. The proposed offset relates to extra costs caused by shortcomings in the applicants’ affidavits during an unsuccessful motion to have two company directors committed to prison.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons ruled that the proceedings attracted costs protection under Part 2 of the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011. He said it covered both the original application under section 160 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 and the later contempt motion brought within those proceedings. A prior application for a costs-protection determination was not a condition of receiving that protection.
The contempt motion followed an order requiring the waste facility operated by Guessford Ltd to comply with planning permission. The applicants considered the order unfulfilled after the eight-week compliance period expired in January 2022. Their motion, issued the following month, failed. The court had found that the order lacked a statement required for enforcement against company directors, the served copy lacked a required penal endorsement, and one director had not been properly served.
In the costs judgment, the judge said those procedural defects were fatal to the committal application, but not so obviously serious that pursuing it amounted to unreasonable conduct warranting withdrawal of costs protection. He said the applicants had a reasonable basis to bring the matter before the court because there appeared to be an ongoing breach of the order’s spirit, if not necessarily its letter.
However, the applicants’ affidavits were unsatisfactory in some respects, leading to cross-examination and a two-day hearing. The judge said the applicants, as those responsible for conducting the case, should bear the additional costs attributable to that evidence. The order would benefit the company, which had opposed the contempt motion, rather than the directors, whose interests it had represented.
The €10,000 figure is provisional. Either side could contest the amount by notifying the registrar by 30 July 2022 and filing and serving a legal costs accountant’s report by 3 October. The judgment does not finally determine that sum. The main enforcement judgment was also under appeal, with the appeal scheduled to be heard on 20 July 2022.