A new arena and Sporting Quarter at Bristol’s Ashton Gate Stadium has moved a step closer after an application for a Judicial Review was dismissed in the High Court.
Waste management company ETM Contractors Ltd. was opposing Bristol City Council’s decision to grant outline planning permission for more than 500 much-needed new homes, including more than 150 affordable homes, behind the company’s waste treatment works at Ashton Vale.
The challenge had halted the sale of the development land, owned by Bristol Sport owner Steve Lansdown CBE, and prevented work from starting on the new Ashton Gate Sporting Quarter as the developments were interlinked.
The Ashton Gate development includes a hotel and new 5,000-capacity multi-purpose arena and conference centre, which will become home to the Bristol Flyers basketball team. The development would see all three of Bristol Sport’s professional teams – Bristol City, Bristol Bears and Bristol Flyers – have a home in BS3, as well as extending its music and entertainment offering following the success of concerts from the likes of Take That and Kings Of Leon.
Mr. Justice Lavender, sitting in the High Court, recently dismissed ETM Contractors’ application for a Judicial Review into the council’s decision to award planning permission.
Kary Withers, partner in the property litigation team at national law firm Clarke Willmott and managing director of the firm’s property services division, acted for the prospective developer, Esteban Investments Ltd., and is based in the firm’s Bristol office, which has over 500 people.
“In what the Judge described as an ‘unusual case’, I am absolutely delighted that the decision dismissing the Judicial Review claim will now help unlock this substantial development,” says Kary Withers.
“Not only will it provide much needed new homes – many of them affordable – but it will also give rise to a new sport and convention centre, plus commercial space, that will help to regenerate this part of my home city.”
Martin Griffiths, Chairman of Ashton Gate Stadium, said: “I’m delighted that the ruling in the High Court means that two very significant development projects for Bristol can finally be restarted and hope to break ground next year.
“It has been hugely frustrating to have these multi-million-pound investments into South Bristol so delayed. With significant support from our legal teams at Clarke Willmott and Landmark Chambers we’re delighted, following Judge Lavender’s dismissal of the case, to be able to pick up where we left off a year ago.”
