Hammerson has fended off a challenge by the owners of a Rugby shopping centre to its plans to revamp and extend its retail park in the Warwickshire town.
Justice Lindblom rejected multiple grounds of challenge advanced by CBRE Lionbrook – owner of the Clock Towers shopping centre – against the planning permission granted by Rugby borough council last July for a redevelopment of Hammerson’s Elliott’s Field retail park .
The redevelopment will involve an increase in floorspace at the retail park from 168,000 sq ft to 319,000 sq ft, with Debenhams expected to provide a new anchor store.
CBRE Lionbrook with landowners Cemex UK Properties and Avebury Properties intend to pursue their own rival plans for a town centre site known as the Evreux Way development site, but an application in respect of that site has yet to be determined.
CBRE Lionbrook sought to have Hammerson’s permission quashed, claiming that it breached planning regulations by failing to carry out a further screening opinion in November 2012, after the proposal was revised following a negative screening opinion in September 2011.
Lindblom said that the officers had acknowledged, not overlooked, the risk of retailers leaving the town centre for the retail park, but had been entitled to conclude that the sequential test was met.
He added: “There is no error of law in that conclusion. It does not go against the preference in national planning policy for new retail development to be put on a town centre or edge of centre site if such a site is both suitable and available. In short I can find nothing unlawful in the council’s application of the sequential test in this case.”
The judge refused CBRE Lionbrook permission to appeal, ruling it would have no real prospect of success.
