notice. The absence of notice is simply inherent in an application for this type of injunction because, quoad newcomers, the applicant has no idea who they might turn out to be. A practice requirement to advertise the intended application, by notices on the relevant sites or on suitable websites, might bring notice of the application to intended newcomers before it came to be made, but this would be largely a matter of happenstance. It would for example not necessarily come to the attention of a Traveller who had been camping a hundred miles away and who alighted for the first time on the prohibited site some time after the application had been granted. 176. But advertisement in advance might well alert bodies with a mission to protect Travellers’ interests, such as the appellants, and enable them to intervene to address the court on the local authority’s application with focused submissions as to why no injunction should be granted in the particular case. There is an (imperfect) analogy here with representative proceedings (paras 27-30 above). There may also be a useful analogy with the long-settled rule in insolvency proceedings which requires that a creditors’ winding up petition be advertised before it is heard, in order to give advance notice to stakeholders in the company (such as other creditors) and the opportunity to oppose the petition, without needing to be joined as defendants. We say more about this and how advance notice of an application for a newcomer injunction might be given to newcomers and persons and bodies representing their interests in the next section of this judgment. 177. It might be thought that the obvious antidote to the procedural unfairness of a without notice injunction would be the inclusion of a liberal right of anyone affected to apply to vary or discharge the injunction, either in its entirety or as against them, with express provision that the applicant need show no change of circumstances, and is free to advance any reason why the injunction should either never have been granted or, as the case may be, should be discharged or varied. Such a right is generally included in orders made on without notice applications, but Mr Drabble KC submitted that it was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. 178. The first was that, if the injunction was final rather than interim, it would be decisive of the legal merits, and be incapable of being challenged thereafter by raising a defence. We regard this submission as one of the unfortunate consequences of the splitting of the debate into interim and final injunctions. We consider it plain that a without notice injunction against newcomers would not have that effect, regardless of whether it was in interim or final form. An applicant to vary or discharge would be at liberty to advance any reasons which could have been advanced in opposition to the grant of the injunction when it was first made. If that were not implicit in the reservation of liberty to apply (which we think it is), it could easily be made explicit as a matter of practice.
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