In the College’s Own Words

Having signed on 28 April 2026 to concede the first permission should be quashed on all four grounds, the College weeks later resubmitted the scheme as 26/02109/FUL, without correcting any of the four conceded errors. It did so expressly so the Council could “re-consider the application more quickly,” “rather than wait for the application to be referred back to the Council by the High Court” (Covering Statement, para 2.2). The Bursar then wrote to all 42 councillors promoting the scheme and assuring them nothing had changed.

The Bursar’s email to all 42 councillors did not mention a material fact: that the College had already signed to concede the first permission was unlawful. The public was told no more. On its own website, the College announced the resubmission as a routine step, stating only that “the application is unchanged as the Judicial Review relates to the Council’s decision-making process, not to the design” (Christ’s College, “Library planning application submitted”), with no mention of the signed concession.

On 1 July 2026, 75 signatories petitioned the Council for a Development Control Forum, the formal public meeting residents are entitled to request. The College declined to attend, assuring the Council that a meeting “will not generate any new information”, and the Council cancelled the Forum the same day. A day later the Council’s Senior Planning Lawyer reinstated it, citing the petition’s strict compliance with the requirements. The petition, with the email chain recording the refusal and the cancellation, is published in full: The Petition for a Public Forum, and the College’s Refusal (PDF).

On 6 July the College held its own open meeting. CLAG minuted it from the full audio, and it is worth reading in full. Pressed on the heritage bodies’ findings of harm, the Master dismissed the Victorian Society as merely “one of the 22” consultees and “not custodians of a building from the Tudor era”, and maintained the College does “not believe there is net heritage harm” at all. Asked why the College had signed away its permission rather than await the October judgment, he told a resident: “I am now going to talk over you deliberately.” A senior academic’s closing charge went unanswered: that the College thinks it “knows better than the court” and “knows better than the heritage body”. The College’s Open Meeting: The Record.

The College repeats, in the Bursar’s letter, on its website, and in its Covering Statement, that the application is “unchanged” because the judicial review concerned “the Council’s decision-making process, not the design,” and “the process involved in determining the original application, not the planning merits.” That is a false distinction.

What was conceded as unlawful was the heritage case on which permission was granted. Historic England’s harm was not put fairly before councillors. The heritage balance was never properly carried out. A non-existent “optimum viable use” benefit was weighed in the scheme’s favour. Less harmful alternatives were wrongly pushed aside. That was not a side issue; it was the case for the building.

The resubmission corrects none of it. The four errors stand. The bulk identified by the experts as heritage harm, requiring a public-benefit balance, is presented by the College as a benefit. The College writes that it does “not recognise any harm” at all, and hence “the need to apply public benefits to outweigh heritage harms does not… apply here” (Covering Statement, para 3.16).

The errors stand. What experts call harm, the College terms a benefit.