The London Borough of Lambeth unlawfully removed options from a public consultation over plans to redevelop a 300-home estate, the High Court has ruled.
Elisabeth Laing J upheld a challenge from Eva Bokrosova, who has lived on the Cressingham Gardens Estate (“CGE”) since 2009, and feared losing her home after the council opted to proceed with only two of its initial five options for redevelopment – leaving the estate facing total or partial demolition.
The judge ordered Lambeth to think again, a decision welcomed by Ugo Hayter from the human rights team at Leigh Day, which represented Bokrosova.
He said: “This is a clear lesson in how not to conduct a consultation. The decision by Lambeth council did not take into consideration the opinions of the vast majority of the residents on the estate who have made it clear that they favoured refurbishment over demolition.
“The judge has made it clear that all options are now back on the table and Lambeth council must re-consult in relation to the refurbishment options and the redevelopment options. We sincerely hope that Lambeth now does this, on a fresh and open-minded basis.”
Laing J found that, while the council could lawfully have rejected options 1-3 at the end of the announced process of consultation, it was not lawful for it to do so without completing the process which it had advertised to tenants, and arrangements it had chosen to make under section 105 of the Housing Act 1985.
The council had argued that it could not be required to continue with the advertised consultation when it knew that certain options were not affordable.
But the judge said that she was not satisfied on the evidence that enough had changed to entitle the council to stop consulting on options 1, 2 and 3, contrary to the terms of the section 105 arrangements it had published.
She said: “My conclusion is that by deciding to remove options 1, 2 and 3 from the consultation on 9 March 2015, the council acted unlawfully.”
She added that the impression she had formed from the documents as a whole is that the council “considered from the outset that it was very unlikely to be able to afford to refurbish CGE, but that it considered that it was important to explore thoroughly with the tenants whether that was so, and if so, why”.
Bokrosova claimed she attended multiple meetings at which residents, many of them elderly and disabled, expressly made specific points about preferring the refurbishment option, rather than demolition.
CGE was built in the 1960s and is a low-rise, small-scale estate made up of 306 homes, 213 of which are council homes.
In February 2014, the council set up the Cressingham Gardens Project Team to consider the future of the estate and put forward five options for discussion.
These included: refurbishing the estate and bringing all council tenant homes up to a decent standard; two different options involving refurbishing with infilling to create new homes; partial demolition of the estate, with the net extra in new-build homes sold at top market price; or full demolition and rebuilding.
But, after three months of consultation, the council announced that it would cease consultations on the first three options.
Bokrosova v Lambeth London Borough Planning Court (Elisabeth Laing J) 24 November 2015
David Wolfe Q.C. and Leon Glenister (instructed by Leigh Day) for the claimant
Jon Holbrook (instructed by Lambeth Legal) for the defendant
