We have had two weeks of evidence with two further weeks to come. What might be considered the most important evidence, on viability and affordable housing, will be heard over three days from Tuesday, 3 December 2024.

It can be seen what a coup it was to force the hand of Richmond Council to organise livestreaming of the hearings. Enabling residents to dip in and out of the evidence without having to sit around in Twickenham has enabled the community to engage in a far better informed debate than would otherwise have been the case.

One question frequently asked as a consequence is what will the outcome be? Put simply we will not know until the end of February at the earliest. The Inspector has played his cards very close to his chest.

What one can say is that the answer is not obvious. The Council and the developers might have thought at the beginning of the year that it was a foregone conclusion, a routine exercise in overcoming annoying local opposition. That is far from the case with an array of experts shedding considerable doubt on the suitability of the plans. People who may have thought this has been an empty brownfield site for too long, so we should accept any plan are voices now more rarely heard as the shortcomings have become apparent in open evidence rather than contained behind closed doors.

One useful test to consider is this. If the Inspector were to refuse the applications and the Minister declined to overturn his decision, would the Council or the developers appeal the decision to the Courts? Surely not. It would be difficult to overturn a decision, judicial or political, which had as its foundations;

an attempt to drive a coach and horses through a central tenet of affordable housing policy;

a planning decision based on community need rather than profit for the developers; and

a refusal to allow the character of Mortlake to be changed at a stroke.

A reasonable Council should already be planning for that possibility. It would be highly unwise and open to severe criticism if they were all to wake up to the new moon on 28 February 2025 and say to themselves ‘Oh dear, what shall we do now?’.

There are several options. No doubt Council Leaders will be sharpening their poisoned arrows to be loosed off at the Mayor of London, the Minister of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the residents of SW14, who they like to caricature as nimbies.

They could simply revert to the original planning brief. In the current climate and in the face of government decisions to be taken about funding new schools, it would surely not be difficult to engage with the Department of Education to change the school plans.

They would lose part of the Community Infrastructure Levy, but if they lose the case, they will lose that anyway. Lose, lose, lose. They would do better to seek to offset that loss by putting in place plans based on the original Planning Brief and accepting that they cannot squeeze the quart into a pint pot.

It would be a loss of face which the current Leaders may not be prepared to contemplate. But positive political thinking might approach the problem on the basis that, eighteen months on from the original planning decision and having heard all the evidence afresh, we can see the benefits of the original scheme of scaled down, more spacious, less high, residential units and a safer spot for a primary school, which might even give our transport thinking a chance of working.

But will they move out of their tunnel vision?