Campaign group hails High Court ruling declaring part of joint core strategy unlawful

Campaigners have hailed a High Court ruling that a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) prepared as part of the development of a Joint Core Strategy for Norwich and surrounding areas was flawed.

But the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) – comprising Broadland District Council, Norwich City Council and South Norfolk Council – sought to play down the judgment, insisting that that there was only a “small gap” in the Joint Core Strategy which it would immediately start work on plugging.

The Joint Core Strategy was drawn up by the GNDP to prepare for the delivery of growth intended to bring 37,000 new homes and 27,000 new jobs to the area by 2026.

The judicial review challenge was brought by Stephen Heard, chairman of campaign group Stop Norwich Urbanisation.

Last week Mr Justice Ouseley ruled that the SEA carried out by the GNDP did not properly explain the alternatives to the North East Growth Triangle, which became the favoured option. The assessment also failed to examine the alternatives in the same depth as that option, the judge concluded.

Mr Justice Ouseley agreed at a second hearing held this week that the GNDP could remedy the procedural flaw by remitting the relevant parts of the Joint Core Strategy dealing with the North East Growth Triangle to the pre-submission stage in the plan preparation process. Around 9,000 of the new homes would have been built in the relevant area.

GNDP chairman Cllr Andrew Proctor claimed that the majority of the Joint Core Strategy remained intact, unaffected by the judge’s decision.

“The local councils will now take steps to prepare a revised Sustainability Appraisal to explain how the process by which the North-East Growth Triangle, as the only major growth location in the district, was chosen,” he said.

“The Sustainability Appraisal will also consider reasonable alternative growth locations to the North-East Growth Triangle. The judgment has no effect on the NDR [Northern Distributor Road] or housing numbers outside of the parts of Broadland in the Norwich Policy Area. Growth in Norwich and South Norfolk is unaffected by the decision.”

Cllr Proctor said the GNDP accepted Mr Justice Ouseley’s decision. “We will immediately start the process of plugging the small gap in the Joint Core Strategy which has resulted from this decision,” he said.

“The Joint Core Strategy remains the most important document we have to help plan and manage the future growth of the area, the scale of which is unaffected by this decision, and we want to use it to its full extent to resist speculative and unco-ordinated development coming forward.”

Speaking after the first ruling, Stephen Heard said: “Whilst we are pleased that the judge upheld our legal challenge on our first point we should never have had to be placed in a situation whereby a group of local residents had to put their lives on hold for a number of years to fight this through the courts.”

Heard added that Stop Norwich Urbanisation recognised the need for additional houses “but not in the manner represented in what is now an unlawful Joint Core Strategy”. The campaign group is in favour of dispersal development.