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The lack of a local development plan (LDP) in Wrexham risks paving the way for more speculative housing developments, the Welsh Government’s chief legal officer warned.

Counsel general Julie James was quizzed about Wrexham’s LDP – a key document guiding future developments, which has been mired in controversy with councillors twice rejecting it.

In December, Mark Jones, a Plaid Cymru councillor, led a successful Court of Appeal case – with the court ruling that the council did not have to adopt an LDP.

The Welsh Government was denied permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, with Ms James telling the Senedd on Tuesday that ministers accept and respect the decision.

But she warned: “Wrexham has no plan in place. And the difficulty for Wrexham then is that, in resisting speculative developments, not having a plan in place is a real problem….

‘Legal threats’

“The real issue here is how we can work with Wrexham council to get a plan that will enable them to resist speculative development and have the kind of development that they and we both want in a timely fashion.

“At the moment, there’s no quick route to that but we are very happy to work with the council to get into that position.”

During counsel general questions in the Senedd on June 17, Mabon ap Gwynfor pressed Ms James about the precedent and implications arising from the case for all 22 Welsh councils.

The Plaid Cymru Senedd member said: “Take away all of the noise surrounding the issue, the fact that the ruling was in favour of the councillors and against large developers and this government makes it clear that local democracy should be respected.

“Other LDPs that were heavily amended by this government were challenged by councillors but ultimately adopted because councillors were told that they had to adopt them or risk being taken to court.”

‘Three options’

Ms James told the Senedd that Wrexham now has three choices: “They can ask the Welsh Government to withdraw the plan and start again.

“They can leave the current LDP as an emerging plan and continue from there, to go back through the process, or they can ask us to adopt the plan for them. It’s a matter for them to decide which of those to do.

“We’ve always taken the view… the council should adopt its own plan, and not step in across them to do that although the Welsh Government has the power to do that, just to be clear. Much of the discussion with Wrexham was about the fact that we didn’t want to do that.”

Ms James added: “We accept the court has decided the rules are different to the way we’ve been interpreting them and that’s something that has to be taken into account going forward. We’ll have to look again at what those rules look like and how to adjust the system for that.”

She shut down suggestions other LDPs could be revisited, saying all other plans have been adopted “so there isn’t an option for them to unadopt the plan at this point”.