This morning’s suggestion in the Guardian that government housing minister Robert Jenrick MP “unlawfully approved” a £1 billion 1,500 unit housing scheme in the Isle of Dogs by the ex-media baron Richard Desmond (AKA ‘Mr Badger’) has surprisingly gone little reported elsewhere.

Given the green light just 24 hours before a new levy that “would have cost [Desmond] over £40 million” kicked in, the minister has now accepted the application must be “redetermined.”

With this controversial planning decision now frozen after Tower Hamlets council took legal action against the minister because of their apparent “bias towards the former owner of the Star, Daily Express and Sunday Express,” further questions about Jenrick’s judgment will follow.

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Local councilor Andrew Wood, whom resigned from the Conservative Party “over the issue,” has now “put in a freedom of information request for all the correspondence between officials and the minister relating to the Westferry Road printworks development.”

He told the Guardian: “It should be investigated. The key question is: why did [Robert Jenrick] make the decision when he did so against the inspector’s advice?”

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Desmond Dropped – Richard Desmond and Robert Jenrick MP – Ex-Daily Express owner Richard Desmond’s plans for a 1,500 apartment complex kicked out as Tory housing minister Robert Jenrick MP is shown to have “unlawfully approved” the proposed scheme.
Robert Jenrick approved Richard Desmond’s £1 billion Westferry Printworks, Isle of Dogs, E14 scheme in January. 1,524 properties were due to be built there on the site of the former presses of the ‘Daily Express,’ ‘Sunday Express’ and ‘Daily Star.’ Originals plans, approved by then mayor Boris Johnson in 2016, for the site were for just 722 units.