The Court of Appeal has upheld the quashing of a compulsory purchase order intended to bring an historic London wharf back into action.
Last year, site owners Grafton Group and British Dredging Services triumphed in a High Court attack on the transport secretary’s decision last year to confirm the CPO covering Orchard Wharf, on the river Thames opposite the o2 Arena.
Now the Court of Appeal has backed Ouseley J’s ruling that the transport secretary’s decision to confirm the CPO, taken at the same time as he rejected an application for planning permission to carry out the port development put forward by Aggregate Industries UK and London Concrete, had been “unfair”.
While Laws LJ differed from the High Court judge and ruled that a CPO could be granted without a successful planning application for the site, if there was sufficient probability of an acceptable alternative scheme coming forward, he nevertheless agreed that the decision was unfair.
Dismissing the transport secretary’s appeal, he said that it had been common ground at the inquiry that, if planning permission were refused, the CPO could not be confirmed, and that Grafton should have been given the opportunity to make representations on the possibility of a “split decision”.
Though long unused, Orchard Wharf in Tower Hamlets, east London, has been safeguarded by the Greater London Authority since 1997. The Port of London Authority sought through the CPO to buy the wharf and ultimately put it to use, in a move it says will support increased use of the Thames for cargo transport and boost London’s economic growth.
