Saving Rook Farm
Well thanks to the absolutely amazing generosity of almost 800 donors, we've now been able to pay all our bills, for solicitors, barrister, expert witness and fundraising, which came to £51,752! Phew!
But especially to Save Our Island, who covered the unexpected extra bill to hire our own Planning expert witness, after Havant Borough Council denied us access to theirs. Any leftover funds will go to reducing that bill. HIRA will publish the audited accounts at our October AGM.
And HUGE thanks to everyone for all your support through this white-knuckle ride, all the personal statements read out at the Inquiry, all your objections and letters to the Inspector and all the messages of thanks.
But ESPECIAL thanks to HIRA's Professor Jonathan Raper and Save Our Island's Dave Parham, who convinced us we could take it on and presented our case, to Anne Skennerton, Chair of HIRA, who personally signed a £48,000 contract with lawyers with no idea how we'd pay it, and Save Rook Farm's Chris Pearsall, who organised the publicity to make sure we could.
We've given it our best shot. We now have to wait patiently to find out whether the Planning Inspector rejects it, or imposes restrictions.
And that will effectively decide the appeals for Saltmarsh Lane and Oysters 2 which we knew would follow, which could take it up to 440+ homes, and around 1,000 more cars.
We knew we would be outgunned. Barratt Homes’ legal team was twice as big and at least 4 times as expensive, all highly paid ‘hired guns’ who do nothing else but Planning Appeals. But we held our own, and they didn’t land any major blows on us.
Barratts had 5 years to plan this. Havant Borough Council had 5 months (and caved in). We had just 5 weeks. In that time, we’ve performed absolute miracles. We hired lawyers to help us, without money to pay for them. We focussed on the 3 issues that would give us the best legal case - traffic, flooding and Brent Geese. We waded through 524 official Appeal documents, and tens of thousands of pages, and wrote hundreds of complex legal pages of our own, all being guided and checked by the legal team.
300 new Barratt Homes at Rook Farm would be a disaster for Hayling Island - our biggest development ever, bringing up to 600 cars and 1,000 people, and years of construction traffic.
And over 2,200 planning objections, also the biggest ever.
We were shocked to find that Havant Borough Council blocked officers being our expert witnesses, forcing us to recruit more, at extra cost 😡. And that Barratt Homes ‘bought off’ the RSPB and HIWWT by paying them for Brent Geese mitigation (which isn’t working). So we couldn't use the acknowledged bird experts as bird expert witnesses 😡.
Thank you for showing how much we really care about keeping our beautiful Hayling Island safe. More information on the HIRA website.
The HIRA committee, Save Rook Farm and Save Our Island .
ROOK FARM Q&A
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Why did Havant Borough Council not fight it?
Having missed the planning deadline, Council Officers, without consulting Hayling Councillors, decided the case was too costly to risk fighting it.
We say it's too costly to the island to NOT fight it.
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How did we fight it?
Normally, Planning Inquiries have just two parties -
- The Appellant, in this case Gladman,
- The Local Planning Authority, in this case Havant Borough Council.
There is a special 'Rule 6' that exceptionally allows a third party to be treated as a main party, present their own evidence, cross-examine witnesses, and receive all documents shared between the Appellant and the LPA. It’s highly unusual to be accepted, but we have.
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Why did HIRA need legal help?
Barratt Homes, owners of Gladman, have very deep pockets, and they hired a top flight King's Counsel and legal team. To have any chance of winning, we needed to fight fire with fire.
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Why couldn’t HIRA fund it?
HIRA £5 subscriptions only just cover our insurance, website, room hire and occasional leaflet and poster printing. We needed to crowd fund it all.
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How do we know the money will be used properly?
All funds raised were kept in a dedicated HIRA Bank Account, specifically for Rook Farm. HIRA will publish full audited accounts for how it's been spent at it's October AGM.
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What if in any unlikely event there are funds left over?
HIRA will consult with its members whether to:
- Offer to return donations (if that's possible),
- Or to use them to support other good works or
charitable endeavours on Hayling.
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Is Havant Borough Council helping us?
No. They have huge expertise and local knowledge, so we hoped and assumed they would be glad to provide expert witnesses, but unaccountably, they refused.
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Will HIRA have to pay Barratt's costs if we lose?
Not if we behave responsibly. In a Public Inquiry each party normally bears their own costs. BUT if the Planning Inspector decides one party has behaved irresponsibly, and has unfairly increased another parties' costs, they can award costs against them.
That is why it was so important we got the right legal assistance early in the process.
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When and where was the Public Inquiry?
The Public Inquiry was June 23-25 and June 30-July 2nd, in person, at HISC, Hayling Island Sailing Club, Sandy Point. HISC made special provision to allow access and parking by car, which is normally restricted.
Choice of venue is the responsibility of Havant Borough Council, who originally selected Havant Rugby Club, but we managed to get it brought back onto the island following huge outcry from residents wanting to attend.
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Why did the £30,000 target increase early on?
Under huge time pressure, we made an initial estimate of £30,000 based on previous experience of a similar case. But this case is more complex, and the legal advice was that we'll need at least £40,000 including a top barrister to represent us. Also these figures were subject to VAT, hence our new target of £48,000.
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Which legal firm represented us?
Leigh Day, the UK's top legal firm for planning and environmental cases. Our brilliant team was actively led by Partner Ricardo Gama, and our barrister was Jessica Allen, of No. 5 Chambers, recently nominated as Junior Barrister of the Year.
This is the same team used by Hayling's Saving Tournerbury Woods group to win the private Judicial Review against Havant Borough Council in 2025. Private Judicial Reviews like this are notoriously difficult to win, but they did.