appellants did not engage with the detail of any of these points, their objection being more a matter of principle.
172. We have not been able to reach any conclusions about the issue of practicality, either generally or on the particular facts about the cases before the court. In our view the theoretical availability of byelaws or other measures or powers available to local authorities as a potential alternative remedy is not shown to be a reason why newcomer injunctions should never be granted against Travellers. Rather, the question whether byelaws or other such measures or powers represent a workable alternative is one which should be addressed on a case by case basis. We say more about that in the next section of this judgment. 173. A second main objection in principle was lack of procedural fairness, for which Lord Sumption’s observations in Cameron were prayed in aid. It may be said that recognition that injunctions against newcomers are in substance without notice injunctions makes this objection all the more stark, because the newcomer does not even know that an injunction is being sought against them when the order is made, so that their inability to attend to oppose is hard-wired into the process regardless of the particular facts. 174. This is an objection which applies to all forms of without notice injunction, and explains why they are generally only granted when there is truly no alternative means of achieving the relevant objective, and only for a short time, pending an early return day at which the merits can be argued out between the parties. The usual reason is extreme urgency, but even then it is customary to give informal notice of the hearing of the application to the persons against whom the relief is sought. Such an application used then to be called “ex parte on notice”, a partly Latin phrase which captured the point that an application which had not been formally served on persons joined as defendants so as to enable them to attend and oppose it did not in an appropriate case mean that it had to be heard in their absence, or while they were ignorant that it was being made. In the modern world of the CPR, where “ex parte” has been replaced with “without notice”, the phrase “ex parte on notice” admits no translation short of a simple oxymoron. But it demonstrates that giving informal notice of a without notice application is a well-recognised way of minimising the potential for procedural unfairness inherent in such applications. But sometimes even the most informal notice is self-defeating, as in the case of a freezing injunction, where notice may provoke the respondent into doing exactly that which the injunction is designed to prohibit, and a search order, where notice of any kind is feared to be likely to trigger the bonfire of documents (or disposal of laptops) the prevention of which is the very reason for the application.
175. In the present context notice of the application would not risk defeating its purpose, and there would usually be no such urgency as would justify applying without
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