A resident has lost a court battle aimed at blocking plans to build homes on a green space in North Finchley – but has vowed to fight on.

The judicial review case brought by Jennie Arthur against Barnet Council’s decision to approve Community Health Partnerships’ (CHP) plans to build on Finchley Memorial Green Space failed on three grounds. Jennie now plans to lodge an appeal against the ruling.

CHP won permission to build four blocks of flats ranging from four to five storeys on the land, which is south of Granville Road and east of Bow Lane, in June last year. Designed to provide 130 homes for NHS workers, the development faced hundreds of objections from local residents. Opponents of the scheme pointed out that the land was supposed to be retained as publicly accessible open space to make up for the loss of playing fields when Finchley Memorial Hospital was redeveloped.

In her case against the planning decision, Jennie claimed the council had failed to consider national planning policy on open space or whether the application accorded with local and national affordable housing policies. She also alleged council made a factual error regarding salary bands for NHS staff and failed to specify when the development should start on the planning permission.

After Barnet Council chose not to take part in the judicial review proceedings, CHP, which is owned by the Department for Health and Social Care, mounted its own defence.

In a judgement handed down remotely on 18th November following a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on 5th and 6th October, deputy High Court judge Tim Smith dismissed the first three grounds of the legal challenge.

Justice Smith noted that council planning officers did not refer to paragraph 97 of the National Planning Policy Framework, which deals with open spaces, in their report. But the judge added that he had “no difficulty in accepting that members were aware of the existence and import of paragraph 97 when they made their decision on the application”, noting that it had been “brought to their attention both in writing before the committee and during the debate”.

Dismissing the second ground, the judge said that it was “it was clear that members were being advised the application was to be considered outside the framework of the conventional affordable housing policies”.

A report presented to the planning committee by officers stated that the homes would be available to NHS staff in salary bands one to eight, adding that band eight salaries ranged from £45,753 to £51,668. But publicly available information shows the highest sub-band within band eight ranges from £75,914 to £87,754.

The judge said there was “no doubt” that the committee report contained an error. He added that “put at its highest for the claimant, one of the councillors appears to have been misled by the mistake”. But he said that “in the absence of any evidence her mistake cannot be imputed to the other members or to the defendant as a whole”.

Although Jennie’s claim that the planning permission failed to specify a period within which development must be commenced was successful, Justice Smith noted that the court had the power “to sever from the condition the parts which render it unlawful”.

Jennie acknowledged that her success on ground four was not enough to quash the planning decision. But she vowed “the fight is not over”, adding that she planned to appeal the decision and was confident of success after her solicitor agreed to pursue the appeal on a no-win, no-fee basis.

A spokesperson for CHP said: “The decision enables us to move forward the delivery of up to 130 affordable homes for NHS staff in Finchley. Housing affordability continues to be a huge recruitment and retention challenge for the NHS, and this project provides a tangible means through which we can help to tackle that. CHP will now explore options for delivering this important project.”

Barnet Council declined to comment.