Swindon’s £300m, 10-year town centre redevelopment overcame a hurdle yesterday when a judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a property owner disgruntled about a compulsory purchase order.
Property owner Mapeley Beta Acquisition Company Limited has been challenging a decision by Swindon Borough Council to issue a compulsory purchase order on nine plots of land in the town centre earmarked for redevelopment.
The council’s decision has been approved by a property inspector and the Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government, but the owner opted to dispute the decision in the High Court.
The Swindon Kimmerfields project is already in its second phase of development. The scheme will remodel Swindon’s town centre, providing a large open square and a series of new streets, a new bus station, new homes and office space, retail space, leisure space and a new health centre.
The developers have already completed the development of a car park and an assisted living residential building and are now working on the construction of a new NHS health centre.
Mapeley owns three of the nine plots that were subject to the compulsory purchase order. The plots are around an office building known as the Tri-Centre. Mapeley claims centres on Plot 4, a paved space that provides access to the Tri-Centre will, when the Kimmerfields Project is completed, protrude onto the planned route of a pedestrian walkway called the Link. The route will take pedestrians directly from the station to the new town centre.
The claimants say that the planning inspector involved and the Secretary of State made errors in law when assessing the importance of the Link to the project, and did not properly consider moving the route slightly to the east.
But, according to the council’s lawyers, the alternative route was “not fit for purpose” as it contained multiple twists and turns and would create a wind tunnel effect.
According to the judgment, the council claimed that trying to improve the route would be “as futile as putting lipstick on a gorilla”.
Giving judgment, Kerr J stressed that “the law jealously guards the right of a property owner to enjoy its property”. “A compelling case that the purchase is necessary in the public interest must be made out to take the right away without consent.”
Even so, he said that the planning inspector had made no errors in law and dismissed the claim.
“The claimant knows why it lost the arguments and why the CPO was confirmed,” the judge said in his ruling. “There is therefore no need to consider a further argument advanced by the council: that if the reasons were not adequate, the decision would, inevitably, have been the same even if the reasons had been adequate. That issue does not arise for decision. The challenge must fail and is dismissed.”
Mapeley Beta Acquisition Company Limited v SS for Communities & the Local Government and Swindon Borough Council
Planning Court (Kerr J) 23 November 2016
