The fight to stop Croydon and three other London councils from building an industrial-scale waste incinerator at Beddington Lane will now go to the Court of Appeal.
High Court judge Mrs Justice Patterson has refused an application to reconsider her own decision against Shasha Khan and the Stop the Incinerator Campaign’s Judicial Review.
You can see the document handed down by the judge by clicking here.
In a recent survey, 83 per cent of respondents said that they want Croydon’s Labour-run council to pull out of the incinerator deal.
But this week, somewhat damningly, the High Court judge dismissed the campaigners’ legal application, saying it “had no realistic prospect of success”.
Khan and other involved in the campaign felt that throughout the hearing they had been financially out-gunned by the expensive QCs hired with the generous legal budgets of Sutton Council, who were using public money to defend their decision to grant planning permission, and contractors Viridor, who will benefit from a £1 billion contract from the four south London councils to build and then operate the incinerator on Metropolitan Open Land.
“It was as if they were buying their legal services at Fortnam and Masons,” one campaigner said of the unequal struggle, “while we were shopping at Lidl.”
Khan and the campaign has a target of £15,000 for the appeal court hearing. “We’d like to do our shopping at least at Waitrose this time,” they said.
Khan described the judge’s decision to confirm her own previous judgement as “normal”.
“The High Court judge has refused permission and effectively left the issue to the Court of Appeal to decide,” Khan said. “We are undeterred and have the support of our legal team to file our request for permission to appeal in the Court of Appeal. The only obstacle is finance and we are encouraged by the massive local support for our fundraising campaign.”
The campaign continues to raise money online here .
Croydon Labour leader Tony Newman: has gone very quiet on the incinerator
The campaign’s legal team has until December 9 to file its legal request for permission to appeal.
In a poll of Inside Croydon readers, 83 per cent of respondents said that they want Croydon to pull out of the South London Waste Partnership and to oppose the building of the Viridor incinerator.
Croydon Labour, which spent five years campaigning against the incinerator being built on the borough boundaries, have been silent on this issue since being elected in May to do something about it. In the Labour local election manifesto, they claimed the “ambition” to make Croydon the cleanest, and greenest, borough in London.
- Click here for sight of the Viridor contract with Croydon Council
- “Cleaner, Greener Croydon”? Really? While paying to burn waste?
- Visit the campaign website here
- Read Inside Croydon’s archive of articles about the environmental catastrophe that is the Beddington incinerator by clicking here
Coming to Croydon
- Streatham-Croydon women’s rugby training, Frant Road, Nov 23
- Cloth Nappy Network celebration, Beanies, Nov 24
- David Lean Cinema, Wakolda, Nov 27
- The Last Sense of Sudden, Spread Eagle Theatre, Nov 27-29
- St Peter’s Primary School Christmas Fair, Nov 29
- Ghost Stories for Christmas, Spread Eagle Theatre, Dec 3
- St Andrew’s churchyard gardening session, 10am, Dec 6
- Fog Horn Funnies, Spread Eagle Theatre, Dec 6
- Croydon Philharmonic Handel’s Messiah, Fairfield Halls, Dec 6
- Coulsdon Yulefest, Dec 6-7
- Oval Tavern Folk Club, Dec 7
- Mayor of Croydon’s charity Christmas dinner, Dec 12
- South Croydon business breakfast, Dec 13
- Concert of Christmas music, St Luke’s, Woodside, Dec 13
- Friends of the Earth Green Beanfeast, Dec 15 (book by Dec 1)
- Croydon Philharmonic Christmas concert, St Matthew’s, Dec 16
- Norwood Society talk: Penge, the making of a suburb, Jan 15
- South Croydon business breakfast, Jan 24
- Norwood Society talk: Crystal Palace and Dulwich, Feb 19
- Norwood Society talk: Charlies Dickens in Norwood, Mar 19
- Norwood Society: Balloons and airships at Crystal Palace, Apr 16
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This morning I sat with a resident who said that it is important to just focus on the really important battles – this is one of those battles. It is just wrong to build such an incinerator near such high density population; it is wrong to take away land that was ear-marked for a Country park. The incinerator is being dumped here on the edge of Sutton and West Croydon because politicians thought it would cause the least political fall out, but no-one wants the incinerator in their backyard. If it was so wonderful it would be in the centre of one of the more prosperous areas of South London, but it is not; it is being dumped on one of the poorest South London communities, with one of the lowest life expectancies.
And our politicians are silent.
Is it any wonder that there is a loss of faith in the political process.