MOORPOOL RESIDENTS LAUNCH LEGAL BID

21-10-2009

Angry residents of Birmingham’s historic Moorpool Estate have launched a legal bid to overturn the planning permission granted to a developer for 16 new houses – in apparent defiance of the city’s own planning guidelines.

Although Moorpool is a conservation area, housebuilder Grainger was given the go-ahead for the controversial scheme in May - prompting suggestions that the Planning Committee should be renamed the Do Anything You Like We Really Don’t Mind Committee.

Now the locals are hitting back.  They’ve clubbed together to fund a Judicial Review by buying £100 bonds in the hope the decision can be reversed.

Spokesman Andrew Hackett writes on the Moorpool Regeneration Group blog:  “These proposals eat at the heart of our estate, destroying garages and allotments and severely damaging the green spaces inherent to the original design of the estate.

“The astonishing decision to allow this development makes a mockery of the enhanced conservation status of the Moor Pool estate and sets a precedent for the future sale or development of other areas.

“The current planning process does not allow for appeal against decisions. It does, however, allow the process by which such decisions are arrived at to be questioned. And it is this process of Judicial Review that the MRG have been exploring.

“A Judicial Review would, if successful, overturn the council's decision to allow development. It must be said that, depending on the issues raised and won during this review, Grainger may be able to then lodge another planning application.

“However, we feel some of the fundamental issues that we are raising, may, if successful, prevent this. We have instructed solicitors specialising in planning and they have identified a number of areas where they feel the council has failed to adhere to due process.”

The bid for an Judicial Review was lodged on October 7, and the Council has 21 days to respond.

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