Another court battle could be looming in a long-running saga over plans for hundreds of new flats on the Newcastle Quayside.
Last month, a judge quashed a Government planning inspector’s decision to allow a controversial development on the vacant Plot 12 site to go ahead. Developers want to build 289 apartments on the land, one of the last empty patches left on the Quayside, but have been embroiled in a row with city council officials and neighbours.
Opponents of the scheme have labelled the 14-storey housing block "monolithic" and "painfully poor", with major concerns that it would block views to and from the historic St Ann’s Church behind it. Despite the High Court ruling in the objector’s favour in November, applicants Packaged Living and Robertson Property have not yet given up their fight – and are now trying to launch a new challenge against that verdict in the Court of Appeal.
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Members of Newcastle City Council’s planning committee were told on Tuesday that the court will now consider whether or not to allow an appeal hearing to go ahead, with no timescale set for a decision. If the appeal is unsuccessful, the developers would then be left with a choice of either going through a second public inquiry on the Plot 12 plans, redesigning the scheme and submitting a new planning application, or abandoning the £40m project entirely.
The council first rejected the plans for the housing complex in 2021, with councillors voting against civic centre officers’ recommendation to approve it at the time. It was later granted on appeal following a public inquiry held in March this year, before the High Court determined last month that inspector Claire Searson made a legal error.
Critics have said that the development would “devastate living conditions” for residents of the St Ann’s Quay building next door and “decimate” views to and from the church. The developers have argued that the scheme would boost Newcastle’s economy and regenerate a notoriously difficult plot of land which has lain vacant for decades.
Mr Justice Holgate upheld the council’s High Court challenge on the grounds that Mrs Searson did not pay sufficient attention to the harm that would be caused to the Grade I listed church and, in doing so, caused “genuine and substantial prejudice” to the council and the St Ann’s Quay management company’s case.
However, he rejected the council’s other two grounds of appeal. The local authority’s barrister, Anjoli Foster, had also criticised the weight that the inspector gave to the deliverability of the development and the fact that she had granted permission for a housing development that did not meet minimum space standards.
The judge concluded that the financial viability of the project was a material consideration, given the “longstanding problems” in regenerating the Plot 12 site, and that there was “no merit” in the council’s arguments on space standards.
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