Working Title Films, the movie production company behind movies such as The Danish Girl, Grimsby, The Theory of Everything and The Boat that Rocked, today failed in a legal bid to block a development near its Marylebone, W1, offices.
The company was objecting to Westminster City Council’s decision to grant planning permission for the development of the Moxton Street car park, off Marylebone High Street, the site of a Sunday farmers’ market.
Developers Moxton Street Residential plan to build a four- to six-storey building with two basement levels. All of the floors above ground level will be used for residential purposes, while the ground floor and first basement will be used for shops, community use, and a community which will be used by the market.
“Working Title Films objected by its solicitors,” Gilbart J, the judge who dealt with the case, said in his judgment today.
“After reciting the success of [Working Title Films] as a film company and taking the trouble to list some of the very well known people which whom it dealt, it turned to its actual concerns,” he said.
He said the company complained about “gross over-development”, and the effects of noise and vibration on meetings and editing. Although it “accepted the principle of the redevelopment of the site”, he said “its objections were concerned with the way it was to be achieved”.
The judge went on to say that, “none of those objections figure in the case”, they put before the court.
When the claim came to court, it was brought under the much more narrow basis that it was not necessary to provide a community hall in the development to make it acceptable in planning terms.
According to the judgment, Alexander Booth QC, lawyer for the film company, said he didn’t object to the hall being let to the council for a peppercorn rent, but that the council shouldn’t have taken it into account when looking at the benefits.
According to the judgment, Booth said the film company objected because it had, “an interest as a good resident of the city in seeing the maximisation of affordable housing”, and that, “it had a fundamental objection to a community hall” being used by the council to generate revenue.
When questioned further, “Mr Booth informed the court that it was objectionable because it might be let to anyone, giving the example of a film show for Russian oligarchs,” the ruling said.
Gilbart said that he only heard brief submissions from the council’s legal team, “because I did not consider this claim called for a reply”.
“To listen to the case for [Working Title Films]and its worries that there may be private film clubs making use of the hall, one wonders if [Working Title] and its advisors have any real grasp of what community facilities are, and how they are provided in the real world,” Gilbart J said in his ruling.
“Throughout the county, there are community facilities owned by local authorities… which can be hired for community events,” he said. “There is a whole range of activities that could take place, and quite properly so. That is the point of a community hall.
“Try hard though I have, I have been quite unable to understand why that prospect is in any sense objectionable,” he said.
“I consider that this claim is totally without merit,” he said.
Working Title Films v Westminster City Council
Planning Court (Gilbart J) 22 July 2016
