MR JUSTICE NICKLIN Approved Judgment
MBR Acres Ltd -v- Curtin
statutory objective as may be relied upon) in the locality which is not adequately met by any other measures available to the applicant local authorities (including the making of byelaws). This is a condition which would need to be met on the particular facts about unlawful Traveller activity within the applicant local authority’s boundaries. (ii) There is procedural protection for the rights (including Convention rights) of the affected newcomers, sufficient to overcome the strong prima facie objection of subjecting them to a without notice injunction otherwise than as an emergency measure to hold the ring. This will need to include an obligation to take all reasonable steps to draw the application and any order made to the attention of all those likely to be affected by it (see [226]-[231] below); and the most generous provision for liberty (i.e. permission) to apply to have the injunction varied or set aside, and on terms that the grant of the injunction in the meantime does not foreclose any objection of law, practice, justice or convenience which the newcomer so applying might wish to raise. (iii) Applicant local authorities can be seen and trusted to comply with the most stringent form of disclosure duty on making an application, so as both to research for and then present to the court everything that might have been said by the targeted newcomers against the grant of injunctive relief. (iv) The injunctions are constrained by both territorial and temporal limitations so as to ensure, as far as practicable, that they neither outflank nor outlast the compelling circumstances relied upon. (v) It is, on the particular facts, just and convenient that such an injunction be granted. It might well not for example be just to grant an injunction restraining Travellers from using some sites as short-term transit camps if the applicant local authority has failed to exercise its power or, as the case may be, discharge its duty to provide authorised sites for that purpose within its boundaries.” 344. The Supreme Court described the need to demonstrate a “ compelling justification ” for the order sought as an “ overarching principle that must guide the court at all stages of its consideration ” of such orders: [188]. (c) Protest cases 345. Necessarily, the factors identified by the Supreme Court were directed at the particular issue of unlawful encampments of Gypsies and Travellers on local authority land. So far as their potential application of contra mundum ‘newcomer’ injunctions in protest cases, the Supreme Court said only this: [235] The emphasis in this discussion has been on newcomer injunctions in Gypsy and Traveller cases and nothing we have said should be taken as prescriptive in relation to newcomer injunctions in other cases, such as those directed at protestors who engage in direct action by, for example, blocking motorways, occupying motorway gantries or occupying HS2’s land with the intention of disrupting construction. Each of these activities may, depending on all the circumstances, justify the grant of an injunction against persons unknown, including newcomers. Any of these persons who have notice of the order
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