The National Trust has decided to take legal action over the decision to grant planning permission for a £100m golf resort on Northern Ireland’s north coast near the Giant’s Causeway, a World Heritage site. This move has generated criticism from politicians.
An application to build an 18-hole golf course and hotel complex at Runkerry was approved by Environment Minister Alex Attwood in February. The trust has now said it is seeking leave for a judicial review of the decision.
The Democratic Unionist Party MP Ian Paisley Jnr said he was ‘appalled’ by the charity’s actions.
The new development, on a 365-acre site, is to be known as Bushmills Dunes Golf Resort and Spa. The scheme proved to be one of Northern Ireland’s longest running planning disputes.
The National Trust said at the time that it was convinced that ‘the planning application was contrary to a range of the department’s planning policies’.
The charity confirmed the legal move, saying it had ‘consistently opposed the planning application’.
It pointed out that the entire development was on land zoned in the draft Northern Area Plan as the ‘distinctive landscape setting of the World Heritage Site in which no development should take place’.
However, North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jnr said the application had gone through ‘every twist and turn imaginable over the last 12 years’.
‘For the trust to now run to the courts in a tactic to delay and stall the process is nothing short of spiteful,’ he said.
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