Lawyers for the University of Leicester told a London judge that a planning inspector was wrong to refuse them retrospective planning permission for one of their halls.
The university has been seeking a certificate of lawful use or development for John Foster Hall on Manor Road in Leicester. The hall is used both as a students’ hall of residence and as a conference venue. The hall is part of a complex owned by the university known as Villiers Hall.
The university is seeking to appeal a decision made by a government planning inspector in September last year.
They say, according to court papers, that the inspector refused them an LDC because he did not agree that previous planning permissions that they relied upon include conference use.
This, they say, was an error.
“There was clear evidence before the inspector (on the basis of which the inspector should have concluded that the 2004 permission permitted conference use) that it was contemplated and intended by the university and the council (as well as the county council) that [the hall] was to be used for conferences as well as for students,” they say in papers.
They say the inspector did not give proper regard to evidence from the university’s project manager, and minutes of council meetings.
They claim that student accommodation is frequently used for conferences and previous buildings on the site had been used for conferences.
They also say that the inspector was wrong to reject an “alternative” case that conference use was “ancillary” to student accommodation use.
However lawyers for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government oppose the arguments. They say that, while the inspector was “entitled” to look at “extrinsic” material to help him “resolve ambiguity”, he was not obliged to consider wider evidence, and his decision was correct in law.
The University of Leicester v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Planning Court) Feb 16-17 2016