Our response to the Judicial Review refusal

Yesterday TCOS campaigner Jenny O'Neill took on Lambeth Council in the High Court to ask for permission to take out a judicial review of Lambeth's mishandling of the planning process to enable the lease of land upon the South Bank (Queen's Walk) to be varied for the Garden Bridge construction. Despite a comprehensive defence* and a hearing lasting over 2 hours, the request was refused.

As we have supported Jenny during this case, we will be considering our options on this limited judgement in the next few days, given that Mrs Justice Lang left her reasons for refusing the application largely unexplained.

It is disappointing that the Garden Bridge Trust continue to waste public money abusing local residents who have a genuine grievance against a council who sells off their public open space for the primary purpose of receiving a "windfall income stream".

The GBT would be best advised to focus on their growing funding gap which now stands close to £60m.

In the meantime, here is evidence of the callous hypocrisy of the Garden Bridge Trust whose charitable concerns must surely be put into question given these catty remarks:

Everyone has a right to challenge something that they believe to be fundamentally wrong. Lambeth Council's underhand methods in fast-tracking the planning process for the GBT, gave us no choice but to seek justice in court: doing nothing was not an option.

As you may know, we have raised funds for our legal fees through everyclick.com/tcos from people who are passionate about stopping the privatisation of public space by this unnecessary private folly. Compare this to the Garden Bridge Trust themselves who have squandered £42m of the nation's public contribution to this vanity project so far - a new tourist attraction that no one asked for - with nothing much to show for it but a ton of controversy.

*Jenny O'Neill was represented by George Laurence QC, Daniel Stedman-Jones of 39 Essex Chambers & Bernadette Hillman of Shakespeare Martineau.