Hulton Park: Bolton to pay over £400k for Ryder Cup appeal

The £240million Hulton Park project was finally given the go-ahead last year by government inspectors who overruled the council’s planning committee, after an appeal by the developers.

The inspectors also decided that the local authority will now have to pay for the cost of the appeal, which will come to a "ballpark figure" of around £400,000.

Council leader Cllr Nick Peel said: “It’s going to cabinet next Monday, we’ve got to formally agree to this and our argument is that if we took this to court our chances of winning this are very slim and it could end up costing us more.”

The developers hope to host the Ryder Cup in Bolton (Image: Peel L&P)

He added: “The planning inspectorate has brought costs, it's important to stress unsought costs, they were not asked for by the developer, to the council and it's difficult to see why they’ve done that other than to give the planning committee a kicking.

“That’s the national system we’ve got to work with and we have to learn from it because ultimately the people of Bolton can’t afford to have to keep paying the costs of appeals like these.”

The development also includes plans for more than 1,000 houses (Image: Peel L&P)

The costs had originally been set to be around £700,000 but was brought down to the lower figure after negotiations.

The final development will see an 18-hole championship golf course and more than 1,000 new houses built in Over Hulton as part of a bid to host the world famous Ryder Cup tournament in Bolton.

Campaign groups such as Hulton Estate Area Residents Together and various councillors representing the surrounding area had opposed the plan citing concerns about the environment and wildlife as well as the impact on traffic.

The golf course will be built in Over Hulton (Image: Peel L&P)

The developers behind the plans, Peel L&P, had not asked for the costs to be awarded but the council, under its previous leadership, decided not to contest the appeal which took place over two days in October last year.

Instead, the UK Planning Inspectorate took the decision after a scathing report by Dominic Young which blasted the committee’s decision as “unreasonable, irrational and injudicious to the extent that no reasonable authority would have made it".

But planning committee chair Cllr John Walsh says he is disappointed by the inspector's "cavalier" attitude to objections.

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He said: “I’ve got to say I’m disappointed, its not normally a matter for the chair of the planning committee, it’s a matter for the executive member.

“But I’m extremely disappointed with the inspectors quite cavalier attitude towards are objections and its important to note that the Environment Agency actually sustained objections about the potential for pollution to spread from the golf course to the water course.”

He added: “It’s extremely unusual for an inspector to award costs to the appellant when the appellant has not actually asked for costs to be awarded, so I’m extremely disappointed with the inspection from beginning to end.”

The costs will be discussed by the council’s cabinet at a meeting next week which will also set out the final figure.