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| COLLEGE CAMPAIGNERS CALL IT A DAY - ON STEPS OF HIGH COURT |
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HERALD EXPRESS 11:00 - 15 March 2008
The 11th hour legal battle to stop the Dartington College of Arts move to Cornwall has finally been lost amid fears over court costs which would have run into tens of thousands of pounds.
The Save Dartington College campaigners backed out of their bid for a judicial review at the very doors to London's High Court as they heard they would have to find more than £44,000 in costs if they lost.As it is, they have had to pick up a £5,000 costs bill agreed despite the fact that no hearing took place.
Now there is nothing to stop the whole of the £23million EU and UK funding being handed over to pay for the controversial merger between the world renowned art college and University College Falmouth.
The campaign barrister Simon Cassell said: "The legal situation now has a line drawn under it. There is nothing to stop the regional development agency handing over the funding."
Tony Whitty, the leader of Totnes Town Council which has supported the campaigners' battle since news of the merger broke more than a year ago, said: "This is a great sadness for the community and the town of Totnes. We will have to manage and look forward to see what we can re-build out of the ashes."
The High Court hearing in London was to have been the last throw of the dice for the campaigners who had been given 90 minutes to persuade a judge that they had grounds for a Judicial Review which would have challenged the way the South West of England Regional Development Agency agreed vital £3.5million of funding to support the college merger.
At the door to the court the campaign group was told that the regional development agency and University College Falmouth would be asking between them for the campaign to foot a costs bill of £44,600 if they lost.
Mr Cassell said that the bill would have clobbered the company, which was specially set up for the legal challenge, and its directors - who could have faced losing their homes.
"It would have fallen on the company but there was a possibility that individual directors could have been made liable so it was felt that it was too much risk to expose them to which included the risk of them losing their properties," said Mr Cassell.
He said that although South Hams Council and Totnes Town Council had leant 'great vocal support' to the campaign there had been no financial backing from any public body.
However the RDA claimed the reason the campaigners had backed down was because they did not have enough confidence in their case and had accepted they had little hope of winning.
A spokesman said: "The colleges will now be able to get on with developing their proposed merger further, and we look forward to supporting them in that urgent task."
It has been estimated that the college move will not only hit the cultural uniqueness of the Totnes and Dartington area but will also tear something like £4.5million a year out of the local economy.
The campaigners had been set to argue that the regional development agency's decision to help fund the move was flawed because they were effectively playing favourites by boosting Cornwall's economy at the expense of Devon.
The agency has always taken the stand that the college has no future in Dartington anyway and if it does not move it will simply close.
The campaigners had also planned to challenge that view as well.
After the aborted High Court hearing, Mr Cassell said: "The campaign group felt unable to risk the personal finances of individual members and we don't consider that is our role."
The RDA spokesman said: "If the Save Dartington Campaign had been confident in its case, it would have pressed ahead with a formal hearing to seek leave for judicial review.
"The fact that it withdrew its challenge at the last minute demonstrates that it finally accepted it had little chance of winning.
"The South West RDA was always confident that it had taken a robust decision to invest in the proposed merger, and we had continually urged the campaigners not to seek to delay proceedings by pursuing what has now been proved to be a case without merit.
"Therefore we felt we had no choice but to make clear that we would seek to recover as many of our legal costs as possible to make sure public money that didn't need to have been spent in the first place was returned to the public purse.
"We regret the uncertainty caused by this legal process, but we are glad that measures to save these student places and higher education provision for the region can now proceed with total confidence."
Mr Whitty added that Totnes and Dartington had a 'tremendous wealth of ability' to draw on to 'fill the economic and cultural gap left by the college'.
He warned: "Because the RDA has been instrumental in the college move we would be looking for very strong economic support and initiatives from them to fill the gap."
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