Nursery not school for general permitted development order, judge rules

Nurseries are not the same as schools under planning legislation, the High Court has decided.

Some nurseries that were once part of schools might benefit from the general permitted development order and be allowed to make alternations without planning consent, but this did not apply generally.

That was the conclusion of CMG Ockelton, Vice President of the Upper Tribunal, sitting as a judge of the High Court

In Bright Horizons Family Solutions Ltd v Secretary of State for Communities And Local Government [2019] EWHC 14 he said that he was asked to decide “is a nursery, attended by young children, a ‘school’ within the meaning of the general permitted development order?’

The case arose after nursery Bright Horizons Family Solutions applied to Watford Borough Council for a certificate of lawful development for the installation of two linked portable cabins in its garden.

Watford refused the application as the order applied only to “schools, colleges, universities or hospitals” not nurseries. Bright Horizons appealed unsuccessfully to a planning inspector.

Mr Ockelton said the case turned on “the ordinary meaning of the words ‘school’ and ‘nursery’."

He said a school was “an institution where a general education is provided for young human beings, typically on the basis of attendance at a specified place for a number of hours on a considerable number of days per year”

Providing education did not in itself make something a school, he said, noting: “A ride on an elephant may be educational, but that does not mean that a zoo is a school.”

The term ‘school age’ was also commonly understood and so “an institution concerned with children below school age is unlikely to be regarded as properly called, without qualification, a ‘school’.

“It may be called a ‘nursery school’, but that does not entitle it to be called simply a 'school' any more than being called a ‘law school’.

Mr Ockelton said: “For these reasons, in my judgment, the unqualified use of the word ‘school’ does not in its ordinary meaning include a nursery.”