The Court of Appeal dismissed further legal objections to a plan to place hydroelectric turbines on the River Thames.
Goring-on-Thames Parish Council has been disputing a 2016 decision by South Oxford District Council allowing an energy company to place turbines on the Thames at Goring Weir. The energy generated would be for local use.
The dispute is long-running. The grant of planning permission was challenged at the High Court in November 2016. It culminated in the High Court judge hearing the case ruling that the council’s decision to grant planning permission didn’t comply with aspects of the Listed Buildings Act and environmental impact assessment regulations.
However, the judge didn’t quash the grant of planning permission, and refused Goring-on-Thames Parish Council permission to appeal.
The parish council petitioned the Court of Appeal directly to hear the appeal and was refused permission in February last year. Even so, the parish council persisted, and the Court of Appeal decided to allow them to make their arguments to re-open the case at a hearing that took place in March this year.
However, in a ruling that has just been made available, three judges at the Court of Appeal agreed that the earlier decisions were not “irrational” or invalidated by a “fundamental legal error”.
The judges dismissed Goring-on-Thames’ case, saying the council had suffered “no real injustice” from the previous judges’ decisions.
Goring-on-Thames Parish Council v South Oxford District Council; Goring and Streatley Community Energy, Court of Appeal (Etherton MR, Mccombe LJ, Lindblom LJ) 25 April 2018
