More than £5,000 has been raised towards a legal challenge against the Isle of Wight Council over the approval of the Westridge Farm planning application.
Led by the deputy mayor of Ryde, Jenna Sabine, the Save Westridge Farm campaign needs to reach £13,000 by the start of October and is asking people to help fund the review. So far, £5,220 has been pledged in support by 114 people.
Approval was given in July, by the Isle of Wight Council’s planning committee, for local developers Captiva Homes to build 474 homes on the last dairy farm in Ryde, despite a group of councillors best efforts. Now, the campaign group, who protested outside County Hall before the planning meeting are trying once again to save the farm for the tenant farmers, the Holliday family.
On the Crowd Justice page, the group said the decision was passed controversially and results in the loss of livelihood, home of the farming family, but also a beautiful landscape for residents and visitors to the Island. The campaign says its aim is to raise money for their fight, enabling ‘ordinary working residents to have access to lawyers to match the lawyers of developers and landowners’.
The campaign also wishes to develop a full legal case and have a legal team in place to launch a bid for a judicial review when the time comes. The money would also support the Holliday family fight to defend their agricultural tenancy and work towards establishing a community farm.
Ryde Town Council has supported the farm, following a motion put forward by Cllr Sabine, in becoming a community farm and applying to become an asset of community value.
At the meeting, Cllr Sabine said she understood the Island needs houses but they needed to be built somewhere else and not on the farming land.
Speaking at the Isle of Wight Council planning committee meeting last month, Ben Gard, the council’s legal officer, said the authority was aware of a letter being sent from concerned residents but that did not mean legal proceedings had started.
At the same meeting, 2 councillors left the chamber after minutes of the meeting approving the Westridge Farm planning application were approved, after they suggested delaying approval until any legal proceedings had been dealt with.
£5,855 now raised. Please everybody support this most worthy Campaign, and show the IWCC we the residents are putting our money where our mouths are. Best wishes and good luck to all the supporters and especially the Holiday family.
Sorry, B.W, meant “physical” not “physidal”. No edit available. Hmm.
There always used to be an edit facility. Not any more and no explanation as to why. Also comments getting continually deleted, no reason given as to why. I made a perfectly valid comment here yesterday, now gone. no reason given. Can’t edit to put right typos, can’t post more than a few words in one comment, can’t comment more than 4 times in a thread, even if all your other comments have been removed. I could understand threatening or abusive comments being removed, but that is not what has been happening here.
This Campaign is foremost against the IW Councils procedures in approving the Westridge Farm development. It’s high time the ordinary hard working person fought back, rather than letting the likes of the IW Planning Committee and developers have it all their own way. I doubt any of the supporters are saying it’s going to be easy, but sometimes the impossible happens. I believe they intend to employ the services of a mainland solicitor who’s main specialties include the environment and planning. I’m certainly going to chip in.
I really hope they get somewhere with it, and hope they don’t encounter the wheels within wheels shenanigans that often happens in the murky world of money and who it is who has the most amount to throw around and the ‘right’ connections.