Real property, real impact: prohibiting persons unknown

Article by Tiffany Scott KC and Ernest Leung, published 1^st September 2026

This article was originally published by Estates Gazette here.

There have been several recent and important developments in the jurisprudence considering the procedural and other requirements for seeking and obtaining interim and final injunctions against defendants who are unnamed and whom the applicant seeks to pursue as “persons unknown”. The Supreme Court’s decision in Wolverhampton City Council v London Gypsies and Travellers & Ors [2023] UKSC 47; [2023] PLSCS 197 is now the most important case for practitioners to consult in this area.

Persons unknown

Court proceedings in England and Wales may be brought against unnamed defendants and the court can grant relief against persons who are only described (rather than named) in the claim form and in any eventual order. In the sphere of real estate litigation, claims against persons unknown have most commonly been brought in possession proceedings and against protestors and members of the Gypsy and Traveller community who enter onto or threaten to enter onto the applicant’s land (quite often local authority land). A series of cases had laid down guidelines governing the obtaining of quia timet injunctions in these types of proceedings.

In recent years the practice had sprung up of obtaining an interim and then a final injunction against “persons unknown” using a variety of descriptions (and sometimes no description at all) for a period of time (usually three years) and thereafter renewing and maintaining that injunction periodically without much real scrutiny from the court. This was a practice usually deployed by local authorities in their efforts to prevent anticipated occupation of and/or fly-tipping on council-owned land.

In many cases the orders sought from the court attempted to capture “newcomers”, ie persons who were unknown and unidentified at the date of the order (and were not therefore parties to the proceedings) but who subsequently violated the injunctions.

The theory was that such newcomers could make themselves parties to the action by doing one of the prohibited acts with knowledge of the prohibition. There was a string of cases in which the availability of such “newcomer injunctions” was debated and there were contradictory approaches from different courts at different times.

Enter Wolverhampton

The decision in Wolverhampton resolved these uncertainties. The Supreme Court confirmed that the court had jurisdiction to grant newcomer injunctions which they characterised as a “novel exercise of an equitable discretionary power”. The court concluded that while there was no immoveable obstacle in the way of granting such injunctions on an essentially without notice basis, that did not lead directly to the conclusion that they ought to be granted, either generally or on the facts of any particular case. Guidelines were laid down so that such orders are now only likely to be justified if the following conditions are met:

• There is a compelling need for the protection of civil rights – or, as the case may be, the enforcement of planning control, the prevention of anti-social behaviour, or such other statutory objective as may be relied on – in the locality which is not adequately met by any other measures available to the applicant (including the making of byelaws in the case of a local authority).
• There is procedural protection for the rights of the affected newcomers (including human rights) sufficient to overcome the strong prima facie objection of subjecting them to a without notice injunction otherwise than as an emergency measure to hold the ring. This will need to include an obligation to take all reasonable steps to draw the application and any order made to the attention of all those likely to be affected by it; and the most generous provision for permission to apply to have the injunction varied or set aside, and on terms that the grant of the injunction in the meantime does not foreclose any objection of law, practice, justice or convenience which the newcomer so applying might wish to raise.
• There must be full and frank disclosure by the applicant which can be seen and trusted to comply with the most stringent form of disclosure duty on making an application, so as both to research for and then present to the court everything that might have been said by the targeted newcomers against the grant of injunctive relief.
• The injunctions are constrained by both territorial and temporal limitations so as to ensure, as far as practicable, that they neither outflank nor outlast the compelling circumstances relied on.
• It is, on the particular facts, just and convenient that such an injunction be granted. It might well not, for example, be just to grant an injunction restraining Travellers from using some sites as short-term transit camps if the applicant local authority has failed to exercise its power or discharge its duty to provide authorised sites for that purpose within its boundaries.

Wider impact

It is a fundamental principle that a person cannot be made subject to the jurisdiction of the court without having such notice of the proceedings as will enable them to be heard. There are only very limited circumstances in which a final injunction can be granted contra mundum and these are the rare exception to the general rules that the court acts against the person (“in personam”) and final injunctions can only bind the parties to the proceedings. The decision in Wolverhamption is therefore a very significant one in the developing jurisprudence relating to the jurisdiction to grant injunctions.

The Supreme Court’s decision does not apply only to unlawful encampments by Gypsies and Travellers but has wider significance in other contexts including industrial picketing, environmental and other protests, and a wide variety of unlawful activities related to social media.

In the property sphere, numerous cases have been decided in the lower courts since the Supreme Court’s decision applying this guidance to the facts of the case and reviewing injunctions that have previously been granted (including WM Morrison Supermarkets Ltd v Persons Unknown [2026] EWHC 1379, where an injunction against agricultural protestors at a supermarket distribution centre was continued for a further 12 months). On a review, the court is not hearing the matter de novo but is tasked with considering (1) how effective the order has been; (2) any reasons for its discharge; (3) any justification for its continuance; and (4) whether and on what basis any further order ought to be made (eg Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council v Persons Unknown [2025] EWHC 1314 (KB)).