Residents win redevelopment scheme JR

Mr Justice Jay granted Damon Moore’s challenge to the Council’s permission for rival development proposal for Frome Town Centre due to faulty officer interpretation of key town centre policy designed to promote business and reverse commuter-town syndrome. The quashing opens the way for Mayday Saxonvale’s approved alternative community-led scheme intended to provide bringing high quality housing and retain jobs and local employment opportunities.

Saxonvale is a large ex-industrial site in Frome Town Centre due for redevelopment and comprising 80% of the Town Centre’s available redevelopment space.

Mr Moore is a long-term Frome resident, co-owner of the Silk Mill (located within Saxonvale) with his partner Kate Moore, and a founding director of Mayday Saxonvale with Paul Oster, (https://maydaysaxonvale.co.uk). Mayday Saxonvale is a local community enterprise developer working with Stories, socially responsible developers (https://www.stories.partners) and supported by over 2,000 local residents, whose purpose is to ensure redevelopment of the Saxonvale site to meet community needs.

Mr Moore challenged the approval for a rival scheme by Acorn Property Group on the basis that it does not include adequate ‘flexible office/studio space’ required by the town centre local plan policy. In the lead up to the case Frome residents had rejected en mass Acorn’s proposed poor quality and overly dense housing conceived to deliver profits rather than community regeneration.

In reaching his judgment Mr Justice Jay had to grapple with a poorly drafted local plan town centre policy missing punctation leading to the officer’s untenable interpretation of the key town centre polices. “It is not just the absence of punctuation that bedevils this provision.” He went on to reason that “both national and local policy point to the obvious desirability and good sense of town centre uses being delivered within Frome town centre.”

The case centred on the correct interpretation of the ambiguous Local Plan provision in context with the National Planning Policy Framework. Mr Justice Jay accepted Mr Moore’s submission that the quantum of town centre uses, excluding retail, should be provided within the Saxonvale site. The judge rejected the defendant’s submission that this requirement need only be met somewhere within the Town Centre. Mr Justice Jay found that the defendant Council had given no reason for departing from the policy on the correct interpretation of the policy requirements, and on that basis the decision to grant permission for the Acorn scheme was unlawful and was quashed.

Mayday Saxonvale is presently in discussion with Somerset Council on the future of the Saxonvale redevelopment.

Full Aarhus costs were awarded to the claimant.

Counsel for the claimant was Jack Parker of Cornerstone Barristers.