LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2021) A UK government plan to build more than 20,000 homes in a rural area of Oxfordshire, southeast England, is being challenged in court by a local environment campaign group over concerns that the new development would breach the government's commitment on climate change, The Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.
"This is the first time a local plan has ever been challenged because of our climate and ecological crisis. This pioneering action by Bioabundance is our last chance to put our environment before housebuilder profit in South Oxfordshire," Sue Roberts, director of the grassroot organization Bioabundance Community Interest Company, is quoted as saying.
The legal claim was issued against the South Oxfordshire district council on January 21 for its decision to go ahead with the plan and UK Housing Minister Robert Jenrick was named as an interested party.
According to the newspaper, Jenrick, is accused of "massive intervention" to push the scheme through after he ordered the district council to go ahead with the project in March.
In a statement posted in its website, Bioabundance claimed that authorities are not giving adequate attention to the worsening effect excessive housing numbers have on climate change and that the calculation of the number of homes to be built is not coherent.
It also argued that at the adoption vote, councillors unlawfully took account of threatened consequences of government intervention, and that the vote was dictated by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government headed by Jenrick.
