News

Specialist planning lawyer oversees successful public inquiry

Release date: 19/12/2008

Harvey Ingram partner and planning law specialist Paul Hunt, has successfully overseen a high-profile public inquiry into a £55 million housing project.

He was drafted in to a four-day hearing to represent Stoke-on-Trent City Council at an inquiry into an ambitious revamp of a former Coal Board estate in Weston Coyney, on the eastern edge of Stoke.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government accepted the inspector's recommendation, after hearing and assessing all evidence presented. As a result a compulsory purchase order to buy the land needed to deliver the project has been confirmed.

The work is being overseen by agency Renew North Staffordshire. It is proposing to demolish 250 sub-standard homes and replace them with 280 new, energy-efficient dwellings. But the scale of the plans had prompted a public inquiry amid objections from a number of concerned residents.

Paul Hunt says: "I am pleased to see the inspector found in favour of this excellent project, which is going to reverse a downward spiral of decline that has been underway for many years on this estate.

"There was no real dispute over the quality of the homes being proposed, or the benefits of this scheme, but given the project's size it understandably raised some residents' concerns at the scheme's impact on them. But it's clear it offers a superb opportunity to radically improve the estate's economic potential as well as its social and environmental fabric."