Judge gives Whitbread green light for Colchester hotel
A councillor opposed to plans to build a hotel on the doorstep of Colchester's Castle Park reached the end of the line today in a challenge to her own Council's grant of planning permission.
Lord Justice Sullivan, one of the country's most senior planning judges, today effectively ended her claim for judicial review of the decision. He refused her permission to take her case to a full appeal.
The decision boosts hopes of Whitbread's work on the planned Premier Inn hotel in St Peter's Street, Colchester can now get under way.
Barrister and Liberal Democrat Councillor Jo Hayes had attacked the Council's decision to grant planning permission in September 2012, claiming that it was guilty of "procedural impropriety" in its decision making process, because the planning committee was "misled" as to the availability of a sequentially preferable site for a hotel in Queen Street, within the town centre.
She claimed that the government's National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) advises local planning authorities that town centre sites should be preferred over out-of-centre sites.
But today, at the Appeal Court in London Lord Justice Sullivan upheld an earlier High Court decision dismissing her claim for judicial review. He ruled that the "sequential test" did not apply in this case because use of the site as a hotel conformed with the development plan for the area.
He said: "The short answer to the applicant's challenge to the grant of planning permission is that because this development was in accordance with the Local Plan the council was not required to apply a sequential test. Absent such a requirement the question for the council was that identified in the planning officer's report, namely whether this site was unacceptable, not whether there might be a better site somewhere else.
"For those reasons I am satisfied that this proposed appeal would not have a real prospect of success."
Cllr Hayes had hoped the judge would give her the go-ahead to seek judicial review at a full hearing at London's Court of Appeal. She had previously been refused permission to appeal on a paper application, but today barrister Jacqueline Perry QC put forward her case in an oral hearing, in which she argued that the democratic process had not been seen to be done in this case.
Whitbread plans to demolish the former Royal Mail depot on the site and build a three-and-a-half-storey 85-room hotel.
