EVERTON FC finally secured permission to build 74 new luxury homes at its former Bellefield training ground, despite an earlier approval being overturned because of a legal challenge.

The council gave the club the go-ahead for the club to sell the land to developer Bellway Homes for £8m at a highly-charged planning meeting.

Permission had been granted earlier this month, but a High Court ruling that communities secretary Eric Pickles had acted unlawfully by scrapping a region planning strategy that could have prevented the approval meant it had to go back before the council.

The “regional spatial strategy” urges authorities to ensure housing development takes place in the housing market renewal areas.

Bellefield, in West Derby, is outside of the renewal area, and when the permission was given on November 9, the strategy had been shelved so planners said there was no longer a reason to refuse the go-ahead for the scheme.

But, at yesterday’s meeting, as residents lined up to speak of their fears the development would cause untold traffic problems if given the go-ahead, the council’s planning officers said approval should be given. Despite arguing at the earlier meeting that the scrapping of the regional spatial strategy meant the council no longer had grounds to refuse the application, at yesterday’s meeting council planners dismissed the strategy and the council’s “supplementary planning document” – which also urges development in housing market renewal areas – as being of “declining relevance”.