Plymouth City Council has responded after a High Court judge ruled it acted unlawfully in approving a housing scheme on Wilmot Gardens.
The council not only admitted their mistake but also acknowledged that they took themselves to court to reverse their own unlawful decision. When they missed the legal deadline, a local was forced to apply to prevent the development from going ahead.
The court has now quashed the planning permission, awarding more than £13,000 in costs to local Frank Hartkopf, and questioned why the council failed to follow its own planning officer’s advice.
In a statement, the council said it had accepted one of the grounds raised in the judicial review and had applied for the decision to be quashed.
According to the council, the planning application was originally approved without a formal condition to ensure the homes would remain affordable. Planning officers had not included the condition because the number of homes fell below the usual threshold and affordability was allegedly covered in a land transfer agreement.
The council has now admitted that approach was flawed and says it will now return the application to the planning committee with the correct conditions in place.
The controversy deepened after it emerged that the land at Wilmot Gardens had been sold to the developer, Darren Wills, for just £70,000 despite reports of higher offers.
Mr Wills, who submitted the planning application through his company Classic Builders (South West) Ltd, was not correctly named in the original legal documents filed by the council. The High Court corrected that error and formally added him as an interested party.
Classic Builders currently holds two major contracts with Plymouth City Council, including the £21 million redevelopment of Brickfields and a £2.8 million upgrade to the slipway at Mount Batten.
Campaigners say the Wilmot Gardens case raises wider questions about the council's relationship with developers and the sale of public land. One resident said:
"When the same developer is buying council-owned green space, receiving planning approvals, and being awarded millions of pounds in public contracts, people are right to ask how these decisions are being made."
Although the court has cancelled the original planning permission, the future of Wilmot Gardens remains uncertain. A Tree Preservation Order request to protect mature trees on the site, including a Category A oak, has still not been decided by the council despite being submitted more than a year ago.
More than 50 formal objections were submitted during the original application process. Local residents raised concerns about the loss of green space, damage to biodiversity, increased traffic, and failure to comply with local planning policy.
The councillors who now sit on the committee, most of whom are from the Labour group, will have to decide whether to revise the proposal, resubmit it with changes, or scrap it entirely.
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