Friends of RAGC announce legal action against Hillingdon Council and ask for support from residents

There is fresh hope that the Rural Activities Garden Centre could yet be saved – the Friends of RAGC are continuing their campaign and have announced their intention to issue Hillingdon Council a pre-action letter for Judicial Review to prevent the centre’s closure.

The Friends of RAGC argue that the council breached the Localism Act by failing to rule on its vital Asset of Community Value (ACV) status within the legal 8-week limit.

The Friends of RAGC have launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover their legal costs for this action.  We encourage you to support them if you are able to do so.

The ‘ACV’ legal status was introduced in 2011 to protect centres such as the RAGC from being closed, sold and re-developed. A time limit of 8 weeks for councils to consider nominations is laid down by the legislation but this expired in August so the council is in breach of this law at the time of writing and remains intent on closing RAGC.

At last month’s full Council meeting, there was a public question on the subject:

Friends of RAGC used the procedures laid down on the Council website to nominate the Rural Activities Garden Centre as an Asset of Community Value as specified in the Localism Act 2011. The statutory 8-week period during which the Council is required to make a decision on the nominations expired before the end of August so at the time of writing, the Council is in breach of the Localism Act.

Why did the Council neither process these ACV nominations within the statutory time limit nor provide us with any reason for this failure?

As Hillingdon’s own official minutes record: Councillor Bianco apologised for the delay in confirming the decision on this. The timing had coincided with the summer holidays which had had an impact but this should not have prevented the Council from advising of the delay. Work was underway to reach a decision which should be made in the next fourteen days.

The meeting was on 11 September, the deadline had already passed by then, and 14 days after the meeting would’ve been 25 September.  Today is 21 October.