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Some traveller families bought land and moved their mobile homes onto it without getting planning permission. Enforcement measures were taken but the families did not leave. The council applied to the courts for injunctions ordering them to leave. The relevant statute said that the court "may" grant an order. The councils said that in cases where permission had been refused, and they believed that enforcement was in the wider interests of the community, such orders had to be granted.

Judges granted the orders but the travellers appealed successfully to the Court of Appeal. The House of Lords dismissed the councils' appeals. The law lords ruled that judges had to balance planning control against the individual circumstances of the particular traveller family – health issues, availability of other sites and so on. Injunctions would only be granted where the travellers' rights to respect for their homes were outweighed by factors making it necessary and proportionate to evict them.