The owner of a run-down industrial building in Herts has been given a second chance to convert the site into a health and fitness club.
Collins J has overturned a planning inspector’s decision to refuse the change of use application, saying that the inspector’s reasoning ranged from being “highly questionable” to “plainly wrong”.
The judge held that Hammersmatch Properties’ plans to redevelop the Vosper Building in Welwyn Garden City had “fully complied” with the local plan review policy.
He also found that the inspector’s conclusion that an “imaginative business use scheme” could “provide the kick-start required to regenerate the complex” was unreasonable, based upon evidence that the two-storey building had been vacant for five years and was unlikely to be occupied before the termination of the present lease in 2009.
“I am not surprised that the claimant was disappointed that it lost the appeal,” he said. “It is, in truth, difficult to see how, on the material before him and having regard to the impugned findings he made, the inspector could reasonably have decided that permission should not be granted.”
Inspector David Tester dismissed the application for conversion of the ground and first floors into a 26,000 sq ft (2,415 sq m) health club in August 2004.
He held that, although the remaining floor would be refurbished for B1 serviced office accommodation, the development was neither an appropriate use of employment land nor needed within the district.
However, Collins J said that the building, sited less than half a mile from the primary retail core of the town centre, was a “wasting and useless asset” that was “functionally obsolete”. He accepted claims by Hammersmatch that the redevelopment project was the only feasible way to bring the building back into productive use.
Hammersmatch Properties Ltd v First Secretary of State and another Administrative Court (Collins J) 24 February 2005.
Robert Griffiths QC and Stephen Whale (instructed by Thomas Eggar, of Crawley) appeared for the claimant; Philip Coppel (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first defendant.
References: EGi Legal 24/2/05
