Holiday park wins tennis court dispute

One of the country’s most successful holiday developments has won a new chance of retaining two tennis courts. Coln Park, the developer behind The Lakes, Lechlade, Gloucestershire, successfully challenged an inspector’s decision to upheld a Cotswold District Council enforcement notice requiring it to demolish the two hard-surface tennis courts and 10-space car park they have built on land known as Claydon Pike within the larger leisure development. Collins J has quashed the decision and ordered the matter to be reconsidered. He ruled that the inspector “could and should have explained more clearly” why he rejected the developer’s argument that if it is forced to move the tennis courts, it will have to build a far more harmful holiday cabin and hotel development in the same spot, for which it has already secured outline planning permission. This, the developer had claimed, was the fallback position against which the inspector should have measured the effect of the courts. The judge said: “It is difficult to follow why the inspector was, without more, prepared to indicate that the fallback was not a reasonable possibility. “In those circumstances, I am persuaded that there is an error of law in the inspector’s decision and that therefore the appeal should be upheld.” He ordered the secretary of state for communities and local government to pay the developer’s legal costs. The developer is seeking around £33,000. He rejected the council’s application for permission to appeal. Coln Park was granted outline planning permission to build 160 holiday cabins, country park facilities and a hotel at Claydon Pike in March 2009. However, it subsequently acquired another part of the site, Tileworks, and secured identical planning permission on that site in July 2010, with the condition that it could pursue one or other development, but not both. It says that both permissions remain extant and that it can decide which to implement..