Remote hearing still acceptable post-lockdown, judge says in green belt dispute

A High Court judge has stated that remote hearings are still perfectly acceptable ways to conduct court proceedings despite the easing of the lockdown. The statement came in a ruling handed down this week by Mr Justice Fordham referring to a green belt dispute that he heard remotely last week. The case was a dispute between Brentwood Borough Council and the owner of green belt land near the Chelmsford Road, which the council fears might be turned into a gypsy camp. The civil courts were quick to adapt to remote hearings using platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams after the UK went into Covid-19 lockdown at the end of March. To prevent an increased backlog if the system stopped working, hundreds of civil cases, including long commercial trials, have been held with all the participants logging in on their computers from home or barristers’ chambers. However, in recent weeks, as lockdown has eased, the Royal Courts of Justice have started to come back to life, with more hearings taking place in its courtrooms. The most notable recent case to take place in the building was Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd, in which actor Johnny Depp sued The Sun newspaper. The case lasted four weeks, involved teams of lawyers, scores of journalists and participants from across the globe, spread across five courtrooms. In his ruling this week in the green belt dispute, Fordham J said that he was “quite satisfied” to conduct a remote hearing “in order to minimise the need for people to travel to or be present in a physical courtroom at this post-lockdown time of the Covid-19 pandemic”. “Because the open justice principle is so important, I will address it explicitly,” he wrote. “Not only am I quite satisfied that there has been no prejudice to any interest of any party in this case, I am also satisfied that the open justice principle has been secured. This was a public hearing. I heard submissions in exactly the way I would have done had we all been present in the courtroom. The hearing was published in the cause list, as was its start time. The cause list contained a contact email address which could be used by any member of the press or public who wished to have the opportunity to observe this hearing by dialling in. “Indeed, I am satisfied that this mode promoted the position of anyone who wished to do so since they themselves would not need to travel to or be physically present in a court room in order to do so. Finally, this judgment will of course be available in due course should anyone wish to access it as being a judgment delivered in public, in the public domain. The telephone hearing itself was recorded and the recording preserved for access should it be needed.” In his ruling he decided that the land owner and “persons unknown” could be prevented from carrying out a number of activities such as bringing hardcore or caravans onto the land, to stop it from becoming a traveller site until the issue goes to a full trial. Brentwood Borough Council v (1) Jack Thursting and (2) Persons unknown (undertaking operational development on the land known as “Land on the north side of Chelmsford Road”, HM Land Registry Title ex981807, without a lawful planning consent and/or seeking to change the use of the land including a change in use to a gypsy caravan site without lawful planning consent) QBD (Fordham J), 27 July 2020 Caroline Bolton (instructed by Sharpe Pritchard LLP) appeared for the claimant. Ben Du Feu (instructed by ET Planning) appeared for the first defendant. The second defendants did not appear and were not represented.