For everyone on the SDAG Committee and Saddleworth residents supporting our campaign, this is of course an emotional victory. We have always felt that the planning application process was flawed and that due consideration was never on offer or given proper consideration by the authorities to look carefully at alternative sites. After a three year campaign we all realised the only option was the daunting legal process of a Judicial Review and that the decision was going to be costly and stressful. This challenge would have been out of reach to us but without the fantastic support of local residents both morally and financially, and our sincere gratitude to their unwavering support needs to be noted. Also I must reiterate our heartfelt thanks to our legal team Robert McCracken QC and Alastair Wallace - Irwin Mitchell Solicitors, who have shepherded us through the legal tangle and challenges of this campaign, their patience and judgements have always been right. The court was being asked whether the decision by Oldham Council to grant planning permission to build a new Saddleworth School in Diggle was lawful. The court has said, in our favour, clearly and unequivocally that it was unlawful. Accordingly, the court has quashed the resolution to grant permission and the council will now have to look at the matter again. One of the reasons for the courts judgement is that when making their decision councillors were not given the opportunity to consider whether the school would be better placed on the Uppermill site and I quote from the Judicial Review verdict: “The conduct complained of in this case must be, I think, the direction to members given in the main report that they were required to disregard the alternative option of redeveloping the school at its existing site at Uppermill. If that conduct had not occurred, the committee members would, it appears to me, have considered whether the council should prefer the Uppermill site as an alternative to the pallet works site…” [para 152] “For reasons I have already explained earlier in this judgment, I do not accept that the committee’s conclusion would necessarily have been the same or substantially the same if they had, as they would have done but for the conduct complained of, embarked upon that consideration.” [para 153] We can only reiterate that we are delighted with the outcome and for once a public concern has been given legal precedence and we have won a small but significant victory for people’s democracy. The previous, unlawful approach of the Council has led to unnecessary delay in the provisions of a new school. Now we should all work together to achieve a new school on the site which both safeguards our heritage and is best for the whole of Saddleworth and that is Uppermill.