Court defeat for fight to stop homes
CAMPAIGNERS SAY THE BATTLE GOES ON AFTER JUDGE BACKS HUGE DEVELOPMENT
CAMPAIGNERS have lost a legal challenge against plans to build 265 homes and a £3.5m new link road on protected green land in Oldham after raising more than £40,000 for the fees.
A judge has ruled that the permission granted by the council’s planning committee last summer for the controversial Knowls Lane application will stand.
Residents in Springhead and Grotton have been fighting the hybrid planning planning application by developer Russell Homes for several years.
The council’s planning committee refused the plans in November 2018. However, a second application, heard at an extraordinary meeting of the committee in July 2019, was approved.
Russell Homes said the proposal would bring much-needed homes to the area as well as £11.3m into the local economy.
The Save Our Valleys campaign group raised more than £40,000 to launch a legal challenge against the decision, which took place at a virtual hearing in July.
Save Our Valleys, via solicitor Philippa Jackson, argued that the 2019 planning report had ‘significantly misled the committee’ and that officers did not give sufficient weight to the ‘harm to the valued landscape’.
It was also argued that members had ‘erred in law’ by failing to give ‘any weight’ to the less than substantial harm to the Lydgate Conservation Area as part of the planning balance.
It was also claimed members of the panel had failed to consider how the development would mitigate the impacts of climate change or ‘contribute positively to the objective of moving to a low carbon economy’.
But Mr Justice Julian Knowles rejected all of the grounds of challenge.
He said: “I fully understand that there is considerable local strength of feeling about the development, and that a lot of, if not most, local people oppose it.”
But he added that his sole task’ was to rule whether the council’s decision was a lawful one, not whether the development is a good or bad idea.
Saddleworth West and Lees councillor Stephen Hewitt said Save Our Valleys’ fight would continue, adding: “We have people who are willing to come together and fight for a common cause.”