Plaid Cymru welcomes apparent end to planning dispute that went all the way to the Supreme Court

Martin Shipton

Plaid Cymru councillors in Wrexham who outsmarted their own council officers and the Welsh Government in a major planning row that went to the highest court in the UK say they are happy that First Minister Eluned Morgan has signalled the end of the dispute.

Despite being warned they could end up in jail if they didn’t approve a controversial Local Development Plan (LDP), the Supreme Court eventually upheld a Court of Appeal judgment in their favour, saying they were within their rights to reject an LDP that would have allowed what they always believed to be excessive private housing developments.

Only last week Counsel General Julie James warned that the lack of an LDP risked paving the way for more speculative housing development.

Conciliatory note

But at the weekend Baroness Morgan struck a conciliatory note, telling wrexham.com: “We’re all looking for a cohesively agreed plan. We want local councillors to own the plan and to take responsibility for the plan.

“Obviously it needs to comply with the broader national strategic vision for what we want to happen. So none of this is rocket science, it is a shame that it got to the point that it did.

“I think what we need to do now is to sit down, get practical, make a new plan that we can all come together on for the sake of Wrexham.”

Cllr Marc Jones, who leads the Plaid group on Wrexham council and in whose name the successful legal challenge was taken, said: “As a group, we’re glad to see an acknowledgement by the Labour government in Cardiff that local democracy should be respected. That’s been in stark contrast to some comments made by ministers recently and is a welcome change in tone.

“Nobody wanted the stress and cost of legal cases that we’ve had to go through to get to this situation, but the recognition of reality by the First Minister is very welcome.”

Motion

Cllr Jones said the Plaid group along with other councillors would be submitting a motion to the full council to formally recognise the legal judgements by the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. The motion would also clarify the situation for officers and councillors going forward.

“We want to draw a line under this now – the council has to respect the court judgements and move forward,” he said.

Cllr Jones said predicted estimates about Wrexham’s population growth had proved to be wildly excessive, proving that those who opposed the LDP had been right all along.

“The LDP whose adoption we were against was due to expire in 2028 anyway, so it makes sense to come up with a revised way forward,” he said. “In the meantime, we can use an existing Unitary Development Plan which has a far more realistic view of Wrexham’s population, which is essentially static.

“It’s not right to suggest that the council isn’t allowing any new housing development at all – permission has been granted for another 3,000 homes, but there are a lot of homes that have been empty for years – I’m aware of examples in my own ward where homes haven’t been lived in for 15 years.”

There’s a suggestion that Baroness Morgan, together with other senior Welsh Labour figures like Transport and North Wales Cabinet Secretary Ken Skates, are keen to close down the planning row in advance of next year’s Senedd election.

“Things are going to be tough enough for Labour in 2026, without adding fuel to the fire by prolonging the LDP row,” said a Labour source.