LEGAL advice from Justine Thornton, the barrister wife of Labour leader Ed Miliband, has offered new hope to campaigners fighting to stop an incinerator being built on the Croydon/Sutton border.
Viridor's plans for the incinerator were approved by Sutton Council's development control committee last month. The Stop the Incinerator campaign is already hoping to persuade 20,000 people to write to London mayor Boris Johnson, asking him to reject the scheme.
Protesters are particularly concerned that the plant would be built on Metropolitan Open Land.
To back up their claims, the campaign approached Ms Thornton, a top environmental lawyer, who has told them there are grounds to challenge the planning permission approval.
Before the advent of the incinerator proposals, landfill at the site off Beddington Lane was due to end in 2023.
Ms Thornton has told campaigners that grounds for challenge include people having "a substantive legitimate expectation that waste use at the site will end in 2023", and that to "the reasonable observer," it appears Sutton Council surrendered independent judgement about the application and approached decision-making with a closed mind.
Paul Pickering, chairman of the Stop the Incinerator campaign, said he hoped the advice would persuade Boris Johnson to force new consultation and a possible public inquiry."
The campaign is also considering the possibility, if approaches to the mayor fail, of pressing for a judicial review of the Sutton decision.
The advice from Ms Thornton has already cost the campaign £2,000 and to help recover some of that cost, it is holding a fundraising music evening on June 28 at the Green Dragon pub in High Street, Croydon, from 7pm to 1am. Entry is £5.
