Dear Friends,
We are keen to bring you up to date with the legal case we brought against North Northants
Council (NNC) to help save the remaining protected trees on ‘the Walks’ in Wellingborough.
When Timothy Corner KC (sitting as a Deputy High Court judge) gave us permission to take our case to the High Court on 18th December 2023, this triggered a 35 day period for NNC and Stanton Cross Developments (SCD) to submit their detailed grounds of defence against the judicial review (JR) we brought in May 2023. This they both did by 22nd November 2023.
We are pleased to report, that the legal case does (for now at least) appear to be bearing fruit. NNC has stated that no further works to the trees will take place without NNC being satisfied that pre-commencement conditions relevant to the protected trees have been properly discharged. SCD has said that even though they don’t agree with our case, they will discharge certain conditions. Of course, quite what this means in practice and whether NNC and SCD will follow – through on this commitment, remains to be seen.
After receiving this detailed defence, we had 21 days to file any evidence in response. After
discussing with our legal team, we did that on Tuesday 12th December 2023. Now we wait for our trial date in the High Court. In the meantime, we will continue to scrutinise NNC’s decision-making around the Trees and will keep going with the fundraising. We have now raised just over £15,000 of the £30,000 we need to get us to court, which is amazing!!. And the full total raised since we started in May is now more than £50,000!!!
Once again THANK YOU SO MUCH to the people of Wellingborough and beyond, you have all been absolutely fantastic!! We still have a way to go to get to the total and hopefully we will all keep working to enable this. We are still running the Crowdfunder page, https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-wellingborough-trees—court-fees-campaign and of course people can make direct donations at https://saveourtrees.co.uk/donate/
Fundraising Events – given we are likely to be in the High Court in February, we are hoping to fit in a couple of events before then. The first will be in early / mid –January, and the 2nd will be in very early February 2024. In addition we are relaunching our letter writing campaign to appeal to people, groups and businesses to help, I will be drafting a letter to share very soon. It would be great if you can share this far and wide.
Perhaps if you know people who would like to give a donation for Christmas (rather than a card or present) they might be up for donating to Save Our Trees instead. Every penny counts.
Talking of pennies, we have a lovely array of WWAG products that would make lovely stocking fillers. I will make a full list available tomorrow, or pop down to the Swansgate on Friday (22nd December) and see us with the Wellingborough Eco Group and Wellie Wombles in the shop opposite Specsavers.
Have a lovely Christmas Everyone. You are all stars to us!
Marion Turner-Hawes
Wellingborough Walks Action Group Chairman