Campaigners who have spent years fighting plans to build a third prison in a Chorley village have a week to decide whether to launch a last-ditch legal challenge to the development – and to secure the cash that would have to be stumped up if they lost. The government announced last month it was pressing ahead with the 1,715-inmate jail in Ulnes Walton, where it would stand alongside the existing Wymott and Garth lock-ups.
That was in spite of a recommendation from an independent planning inspector who chaired a public inquiry into the proposal that it should be blocked over concerns about road safety risks during construction of the category C facility. The Ulnes Walton Action Group (UWAG) – which has opposed the prison since it was first mooted four years ago – is now considering whether to seek permission to mount a judicial review of the government’s decision.
If such a challenge went ahead, the community campaign believes it would be protected from so-called “prohibitive costs” – likely in excess of £100,000 – were it to fail in its legal bid. However, the group would nevertheless face a bill of around £10,000 if the case went against it – and so says it is now “actively trying to secure pledges” from anyone who would be willing to put their hand in their pocket if it eventually proved necessary. No money would have to be provided upfront.
The deadline for deciding whether to try to take the prison plans to the High Court is January 15, the date by which UWAG would have to ask for “leave to appeal” against the decision to give the prison the green light. It would then be several weeks before the group learned whether its application had been successful and the case was going to be heard.
It is understood UWAG has been advised it has a 50/50 chance of success at any judicial review. A spokesperson for the group told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that they were the same odds it had faced at every stage of the planning process – during which the prison proposal had been refused by Chorley Council and twice recommended for refusal by planning inspector Tom Gilbert-Wooldridge.
They added: “We are currently researching our options to see if [a legal challenge] is viable – but we know that we are up against a very tight deadline. There is a potential case to answer. Tom Gilbert-Wooldridge is the expert in his field and he has sat in front of all sides, where evidence has been tested – and he reached an informed decision based on the evidence in front of him,” the spokesperson said.
Mr Gilbert-Wooldridge oversaw a two-part public inquiry into the proposed prison, which sat across several weeks, first in the summer of 2022 and then last March. It followed an appeal by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) against Chorley Council’s refusal of permission for the jail in December 2021.
The then Communities Secretary, Michael Gove, took the unusual step of ‘recovering’ the appeal – meaning he had the final say, having taken the inspector’s recommendations into account. After the first sitting of the inquiry, Mr. Gilbert-Wooldridge said the appeal should be dismissed, but Mr. Gove declared in January 2023 he was “minded to” grant permission for the jail – if highways issues highlighted in the evidence could be overcome.
The inquiry was reopened more than a year later to determine whether or not that was the case. The inspector once again reached the same conclusion and recommended the appeal by the MoJ be dismissed, because of concerns over the ability of the local road network to cope safely with the volume of construction traffic that would be generated by the prison build.
However, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner – by now also in Michael Gove’s former cabinet role of Communities Secretary – concluded that any outstanding road-related issues would be of “limited harm”. To that end, she gave the go-ahead to the jail, a move which would take the combined prison population of Ulnes Walton to more than that of the village itself.
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