ANTI-Silver Hill campaigner Kim Gottlieb is set to launch a second legal challenge against Winchester City Council after councillors moved to protect the scheme’s planning permission.

Civic chiefs now face action on two fronts after failing to block 19 pre-construction conditions which could stop permission expiring next week.

Critics told a meeting yesterday that it was designed to hold onto the current version of the project, which faces an uncertain future after councillors voted to abandon developer TH Real Estate.

The company has also raised the prospect of litigation after the decision to sever its contract.

Cllr Gottlieb, leader of the Winchester Deserves Better campaign, issued a legal warning to the council ahead of Thursday’s planning committee.

He said work on archaeology, sewage and other areas had been rushed through with days to go before planning permission expires on the so-called 2009 scheme.

The decision is based on “inadequate, confliction and contradictory information”, Cllr Gottlieb added.

TH Real Estate has until Tuesday to start work or its contract will ended for good. A spokesman at the meeting could not confirm whether they would start work by Tuesday.

The campaigners' case was made at planning committee by Cllr Rose Burns.

She said: “The developer has had just short of seven years to satisfy the requirements of the planning pre-conditions. They ask the council now, within 5 days of the expiry of the consent, to approve the detail of reports some of which are still only in draft and many of which are inadequate, incomplete and fundamentally flawed. Some are self-contradictory as well as being inconsistent with others in crucial details.”

The decision would usually be taken by planning officials without a public meeting, but was put on the committee’s agenda by Cllr Burns.

Councillors voted to give the responsibility back to officers, with six votes for and two abstentions.

Backing the move, Lib Dem councillor Therese Evans said: “We as a planning committee are not technical experts and we have experts from our offices and we have heard from them. We have got to a point where we trust in our officers and their expertise.”

Chartered surveyor Andrew Smith branded the scheme a “sham”.

He told the meeting: “It does seem a very cynical attempt to get the 2009 application set in stone,” he said. “It should not be considered now it is far too late – the whole thing should die.”