When Rushcliffe Borough Council adopted the Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) that was supposed to be the “Masterplan” for their proposed “Sustainable Urban Expansion”, back in March – without the very information they had paused adopting it for back in January – we took legal advice.
It turns out that we had very strong grounds for challenging the adoption, and we lodged an application for a Judicial Review with the High Court.
One of our grounds is that the SPD document was worded in a way that made it actually another type of document in all but name… it is actually functioning as a “Development Planning Document” (DPD). And it needs to be – it is a Masterplan to guide development so it needs to be prescriptive about what is included in the development and how it is shaped.
However, a DPD gets publicly examined (in front of the Planning Inspectors) and there has to be viability evidence produced… to show that the development that is being guided is actually both feasible and viable.
By using the “SPD” label for this document – (which was as directive as a DPD should be, for the task it was produced to do) – Rushcliffe Borough Council avoided having any external scrutiny on the plan, and avoided having to produce any cost plans or financial figures regarding the Viability of the proposed development.
In response to our request for a Judge to review the decision to adopt the SPD on this (and another two grounds), Rushcliffe Borough Council AMENDED the document…
They took out the directive and prescriptive language, in an attempt to make it read like an SPD instead of a DPD!
They rewrote and amended the document, so it’s purpose looked different, and then, WITHOUT re consulting the public (as they should have done when altering this document and re adopting it) they just got the Council Committee to re adopt it.
So, they rewrote the document in response to our legal challenge, (even though they denied our claim had any legal merit 😅) and then readopted it without any public consultation over the rewording that reduced the more directive language that would guide their development and the obligations on developers.
Instead of withdrawing the SPD and doing it properly as a DPD (or as an SP as the local planning documents rules have now all changed on June 30th this year), they rushed through the amended document on June 23rd.
Without public examination, in front of the Planning Inspector, RBC and the developers have so far avoided ANY scrutiny of the decisions that have been made up to this point- and the evidence that underpins them.
For example- nowhere has anyone produced any figures that show the proposed development is even remotely Viable! (And I’ve been trying to dig the numbers out of RBC for years… 👀)
So- by applying for a Judicial Review, we will get the chance to drag all of this out into the open.
Rushcliffe residents will have the opportunity to see exactly how this proposed development stacks up- or not.
However… legal teams cost money- and RBC have been dragging out and delaying things with procedural objections- all of which take time and £££ to respond to. You could argue that this is a well known tactic to exhaust community groups challenging authority…
If you can help us with the costs of our campaign, it would be very much appreciated, thank you:
You can donate directly to our community group bank account:
Account name: Save Nottingham Airfield
Sort code: 30-54-66
Account number: 33431268
Or you can donate via our Crowdfunder account.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-nottingham-airfield#
Thank you! 🙏🏻
Legal proceedings seem to take an inordinate amount of time… but we are looking forward to the opportunity to really shine a light on the issues at the heart of all of this!
Rushcliffe deserves SO much better
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