Evening! We have big news for everyone who cares about Broadwalk, as today we took a major step towards our Judicial Review, and have sent our Pre-Action letter to Bristol city council.
BCC officially approved the Broadwalk application when the published the legal paperwork on 22nd December. This kick-started a 6-week countdown for us to submit our request for a Judicial Review into the decision to approve Broadwalk. Luckily our Barrister was well-prepared and has sprung into action.
- The first step in the process is to write to BCC telling them why we are concerned about their decision, and they have a week to respond to us and find a solution if they want to avoid a court case. This is what we’ve done today.
- If no agreement is reached - or they ignore us - then we’ll submit our papers to the courts and request a Judicial Review hearing. This has to be done within 6 weeks of the planning decision being approved.
- A High Court judge will review our papers and decide if our case has enough substance to warrant a full Judicial Review hearing. If it does, they’ll give us permission to proceed. This can take up to 3 months to decide.
- if we’re given permission, we then start preparing for a full hearing at the High Court. It can take over a year to get a hearing date, but the hearing itself is normally quite quick, maybe 1 or 2 days.
- if we aren’t given permission based on our written application, we can ask for a chance to present our case face-to-face, which might change their mind and give us permission for a hearing.
It’s pretty scary to see my name as the potential claimant on a court case like this, and asking for a Judicial Review was always our last-resort scenario. Helen and I have tried really hard to talk some sense into BCC and convince them to reconsider the decision to aprove Broadwalk. We have received amazing support from many local Councillors and together we got close to changing their mind, but that door was slammed shut when BCC officially approved the planning application on 22nd Dec.
Many of you donated the money which has funded this action, and knowing that you want us to challenge BCC’s decision has kept us going when times have been hard and we’ve felt exhausted. I hope we’ll find a way to make the Broadwalk development more acceptable for everyone as we all agree that something has to be done, just not this. Either way, we’ll know that we did everything we possibly could!