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Residents seek judicial review over estate regeneration planning decision
Residents of an estate in Bath are seeking a High Court judicial review of a decision to approve a housing association’s regeneration plans.
Curo, which owns and manages more than 13,000 homes across the South West, was granted outline planning permission to demolish 542 homes on the Foxhill Estate and replace them with 700 new builds in July.
Lawyers acting for the Foxhill Residents’ Association submitted several legal challenges to Bath & North East Somerset Council in December over its decision.
Among other concerns, the lawyers claimed the authority had failed to follow its own policy regarding the loss of social housing in regeneration schemes.
Curo’s plans for the estate will result in a net loss of 204 affordable rented homes on the site.
The council refuted all of the points made, meaning the claim has now been submitted to the High Court.
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Rowan Smith, solicitor at Leigh Day, said: “The loss of social housing point we make is that the council failed to properly assess the impact on vulnerable groups.
“There’s also a point we make that the council incorrectly applied its policy about the regeneration of social housing estates.
“It didn’t explore whether a greater number of social houses could be built based on what Curo said about the viability of the scheme. That was the policy of the council if you read it correctly.”
Curo submitted a viability assessment as part of its planning application, which a planning officer’s report said will see the housing association make a loss on the Foxhill Estate regeneration.
Mr Smith added that the council had made “errors” by taking affordable rented homes delivered through the neighbouring Mulberry Park site – where Curo is building 700 new homes, 30% of which will be affordable.
“We say that they have double counted and promised a number of additional social houses, but then subsequently said that those social housing tenants from Foxhill would be moved to Mulberry Park, so there will not actually be additional social housing delivered,” he said.
A High Court judge will now decide if there is legal justification for a judicial review. Bath & North East Somerset Council has 21 days to respond to the submission.
A spokesperson for the council said: “All communications on this matter are subject to legal privilege and so we will not be commenting.”
A spokesperson for Curo said: “It’s not appropriate for us to comment at this stage and we will await the outcome of the legal process.”
Peter Buckley, a member of the Foxhill Residents’ Assocation, said: “From our point of view it’s a very ill-conceived scheme from the start.
“We’re well aware that there are blocks of flats on the estate which are run down, but the majority of the estate is houses, with a lot of owner-occupiers. Not enough work was done on separating what was good-quality housing and what needed knocking down.”
