Monthly Archives: July 2017

Clearing the air: Mountfield’s day in court

Posted on by

The judicial review of the Mountfield development took place this week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The case – Shirley & Rundell v. Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government – was heard before Mr Justice Dove. It was brought by Emily Shirley of Bridge and Michael Rundell, ably represented by Mr Robert McCracken QC, a leading environmental lawyer.

The case was brought after unsuccessful lobbying from several citizens for the Secretary of State to call in the Mountfield development on the grounds that Canterbury City Council had failed properly to consider the detrimental impact that the development would have on air quality. Last December the Secretary of State announced that he would not call in the proposal, leaving campaigners with no option other than a judicial review.

In court, Mr Robert McCracken noted that Canterbury City Council had referred to air quality mitigation in its report, but that the case was not about mitigation or amelioration of air quality but compliance, with the council failing to ensure compliance with existing legislation by producing an effective and up to date Air Quality Action Plan. Mr McCracken stressed that when refusing to call in the proposal the Secretary of State had specifically left environmental compliance to the council when, in fact, he was legally obliged to consider compliance with air quality legislation as a call in consideration.

 The feeling of those who attended the High Court this week was that Mr Justice Dove gave both sides a fair hearing. The decision will be announced at the latest by September. It is not possible to predict what the judgement will be.

Canterbury is not the only city in the news this week on air quality grounds. As the Mountfield case was being heard at the High Court a new policy on air quality was released by the Secretary of State for the Environment (Michael Gove).1 The policy was published after a 2016 court ruling that the government needed to improve measures to tackle illegal levels of air pollution. But for the city leaders of some of the UK’s most heavily polluted cities – including Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Southampton – the policy does not go far enough; they have called for stronger measures and urgent legislation if they are to meet legal pollution levels.2

The leaders of these cities will be awaiting Mr Justice Dove’s judgement with interest; for if Mountfield is rejected on air quality grounds it could provide an important legal precedent for the rest of the UK.

References

  1. The government air quality policy, published on 26 July 2017, can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/air-quality-plan-for-nitrogen-dioxide-no2-in-uk-2017
  2. For comment and analysis of the new policy see: ‘Does the UK plan to tackle air pollution stack up?’, Financial Times, 27 July 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/09b589d8-71e8-11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c ; ‘UK’s new air pollution plan condemned as “weak” and “woefully inadequate”’, Guardian, 27 July 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/05/government-fails-to-commit-to-diesel-scrappage-scheme-in-uk-clean-air-plan; ‘Diesel and petrol car ban: clean air strategy “not enough”’, BBC News, 27 July 2017 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40731164 

This is likely to be our last posting before the summer holiday season. Thank you for the all messages of support we have received. We wish our readers a good summer break.

Sturry

Posted on by

Plans for the continuing suburbanisation of Canterbury and its surrounding environs continue, with the announcement of plans for a new suburb to the west of Sturry and south of Broad Oak. 700 new homes are planned along with an ambitious bypass to ease the city’s growing traffic congestion. The site will occupy 140 acres of farmland and woodland.

Facebook face off: What are the limits of free speech on social media?

Posted on by
On 12 July British aristocrat Rhodri Philipps was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison for posting a threatening and racially-aggravated message on Facebook against the anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller. Philipps had offered £5000 to “the first person to ‘accidentally’ run over this bloody troublesome first generation immigrant”, referring to Ms Miller as a “boat jumper”.
 
Thankfully we don’t have this sort of problem in Bridge. The Bridge village Facebook site is an asset to the village. It was set up by two parish councillors and plays a valued role in the social and cultural life of the community. But two days after Philipps started his sentence a thread appeared on the site that some in Bridge have found unsettling.
 
The thread – now closed – appeared on 14 July. It was started by a villager noting that Canterbury City Council had ratified the local plan which includes a Green Gap between Bridge and the planned Mountfield development. It was suggested that the Green Gap is under threat from the Bridge Neighbourhood Plan. There was an attempt to open a debate, with the post finishing “What do you think?”
 
All very democratic; and had the thread been allowed to run a range of views could have been garnered to help the village’s decision makers. But after 6 likes and 2 agrees, two lengthy posts were made by the Parish Council chairman; some other villagers then posted that these contributions were inappropriate in terms of content and tone. Some further postings were made before a second member of the Parish Council intervened, after which the thread was closed.
 
You can see the thread on Facebook here. (If you cannot access Facebook please click here.) Our readers will make up their own minds on which postings were inappropriate. No one from ConserveBridge posted to the thread.
 Parish councillors are people with strong views; and they are fully entitled to hold and express these views. And, as we have made clear before in previous postings on this page, councillors are entitled to the appreciation of the community for serving the village. We are happy to repeat that here. One of the councillors who posted to the thread made clear he did so because he “wanted to give something back,” a motive that deserves respect.
 
But there is something else that is important too: councillors serve the community. They thus have to grapple with the dilemma of expressing both their own views, as well as the mood of the community. We accept that this cannot always be easy; but it is the nature of public office. Councillors cannot fend off criticisms and opinions they do not agree with by responding that they are “volunteers” who “do their best”. Like any public representative – such as city councillors, county councillors and MPs – they need to accept alternative views and, sometimes, criticism, alongside the plaudits and the praise. It should not be otherwise in a healthy democracy. The issues at stake – housing, preserving the shrinking Green Gap between Bridge and Canterbury, and our status as a rural community – are simply too important.
 
The disagreement on the Bridge Facebook site is trivial in comparison to the dark unpleasantness of the Philipps-Miller case. However, in very different ways both cases raise important questions on how social media should be used, the opinions that can legitimately be expressed, and the sanctions that should be taken against those whose views transgress what is socially acceptable. We note that this morning a new administrator’s message has appeared on the Bridge site: “Posts should be polite, no mockery or scorn – else you may be banned.”
 
We welcome this. We are confident that no one will be banned simply for expressing views that differ with those of community leaders; and we trust that the warning applies to everyone without fear or favour, members of the public and parish councillors alike.

Canterbury District Local Plan

Posted on by

At its meeting held on 13 July, and after several years of deliberations, Canterbury City Council formally approved the Canterbury District Local Plan, as well as the report of the government appointed Housing Inspector, Mr Moore. Two votes were held:

  1. Vote to accept the Inspector’s report: 34 for, 0 against with 2 abstentions
  2. Vote to accept to adopt the Local Plan: 32 for, 1 against with 3 abstentions.

This is mixed news. The Green Gap now has formal standing and the proposed development of 40 homes on the Brickfields has been rejected by the Inspector. However, the Mountfield development has now been approved. A few councillors stated that they did not approve the plan because of Mountfield, but it was claimed that the alternative would be a lot worse, leaving the city open to exploitative developers if the Plan was not adopted.

Kent and Canterbury Hospital

Posted on by

Developer Mark Quinn is reported to have offered to build the shell of a new five storey hospital. But there is a catch: the offer is tied to Canterbury City Council approval for the building of 2000 new homes. The proposal has been greeted cautiously by the Council and by Rosie Duffield MP. More news here.