The council refused to consider retrospective planning permission for two Traveller pitches, including caravans, touring caravans, and dayroom buildings, on a green belt site on land to the south of the station.
Landowner Thomas Connors challenged the decision, but on Friday (June 19), a High Court judge backed the council, leaving the authority free to press ahead with enforcement action.
The council refused to consider Mr Connors’ August 2025 application using a legal power that allows councils to “decline to determine” a planning application where it overlaps with existing enforcement notices.
Two enforcement notices, issued in May 2019 over hardstanding, gates, fences and a mobile home, have never been complied with.
The site has already been the subject of three criminal convictions for breaches in 2021, 2022, and 2024.
Mr Connors, who purchased the land in February 2025, argued at the High Court that the council had been wrong to refuse to consider his application on its own merits.
But Mr Justice Fordham ruled that the council had acted within the law.
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He noted that despite enforcement notices being served following earlier developments on the land, the land had never been restored to its original condition.
“There has been no wiping the slate clean. There has been no reset,” Mr Justice Fordham said.
“The enforcement notices have been disobeyed and ignored while repeated planning applications have been made and rejected in the public interest.”
The council’s decision stands, and Mr Connors was ordered to pay £7,700.01 in legal costs.
The disputed site sits alongside several other Traveller sites around Knockholt railway station, but this case concerns only the long-running unauthorised pitches on the south side of the station.
