Field campaigners plan next move after court defeat

Campaigners say they are considering their next move after losing a legal challenge against plans to build on a popular open space.

Residents living near Bengeo Field in Hertford failed to get permission for a judicial review of the decision by East Hertfordshire Council to give planning consent for homes to be built.

They had been hoping for a victory after being told their case was not totally without merit.

They say they will now reflect on the decision and decide what to do next.

The campaigners said a condition was in place preventing any housing being built on Bengeo Field until the landscape had been changed by a proposed quarry.

The quarry never materialised, so the campaigners challenged a decision to allow 118 houses to be built on the field.

But East Hertfordshire Council said there was no such restriction on development in the district plan, and that it had a responsibility to provide new homes.

The campaigners' request for a judicial review of the planning decision was refused, but the judge did not rule that the case was totally without merit.

As a result, they had a chance to make their case again in the Royal Courts of Justice.

Aska Pickering, one of the group, said: "The hearing went way over the planned one-and-a-half hours, it was nearly four.

"The judge was sympathetic to our case in not awarding all the costs asked for."

She added that the judge "praised the clarity of sincerity of our case and the way we presented it, but he was unable to find that the legal test of irrationality had been met".

The legal test, one of the grounds on which a judicial review might be successful, requires a decision to be so unreasonable or absurd that no sensible authority could have reached it.

Ms Pickering added that her group would now "reflect on the decision and decide on what to do next".

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