High Court gives Farm Terrace Allotment Challenge the go-ahead
The High Court has given the Farm Terrace allotment-holders permission to proceed with a challenge to Eric Pickles’s decision to allow Watford Council to build on their allotment site. There will now be a full hearing of the case later this year.
The claim has been brought by 3 plot-holders who face eviction to make way for housing. The site cannot be built on without the Secretary of State’s consent, and there are strict criteria that have to be met before Council’s are given the all clear. In this case consent was granted even though the criteria were not met, because everyone agrees that the site is not ‘surplus to requirements’. Consent was nonetheless granted because, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, building on the allotments is in the public interest. The campaigners and many allotment holders and gardeners around the country disagree, arguing that the development could go ahead without building on the allotments, and that retaining allotments is also in the public interest.
On 14 April 2014 a High Court judge looked at the case carefully and, after considering the Secretary of State’s and the Council’s calls for the claim to be refused permission, has disagreed and has decided that the grounds of challenge are arguable. The Order can be accessed here. There will now be a full hearing of the judicial review at the Royal Courts of Justice in London later this year.
Andrew Moore, one of the Claimants, said today:“It is a shame that we have had to take the case this far. It’s not too late for the Council and the Secretary of State to change their minds and accommodate the allotments within the development, as the developers have acknowledged they could. I am glad that the judge has recognised that this case raises serious issues that merit a full hearing. This case is not only important to me and the other Farm Terrace Allotment holders. It will affect many other sites across the country that are also under threat from development, and we hope to set a precedent that will help to protect allotments for future generations as well as our own. I firmly believe that our children will thank us for standing up to the authorities.“
Adam Hundt, of Deighton Pierce Glynn Solicitors, who represent the Claimants, said: “The Secretary of State has criteria by which applications for consent to build on allotments are assessed, but he has effectively decided that those criteria can be ignored if profit margins are said to be at risk. One has to question what the point of having criteria that are designed to protect allotments from development is, if they can be ignored with so little justification. As a keen allotment gardener myself, I am hopeful that the Court will ensure that allotment holders can, in reality, rely on the protection from developers that the Secretary of State’s criteria are said to give their sites.”
Full details of the legal challenge can be read here on the campaigners’ website and on twitter @SaveFarmTerrace.
The fight to save Farm Terrace Allotments in Watford was aired on BBC 1’s Inside Out London Programme on 2 March 2014. The BBC took the viewers through the story to save this historic site that has been in existence since 1896. If you would like to see the video, please click the attached link – bbc 1 Inside Out
