Weston Homes has said it will fight Robert Jenrick’s decision to deny planning permission for the £271m Anglia Square redevelopment in Norwich.

Jenrick has overturned a local decision approving the scheme, and ordered the council to officially reject planning consent for the development, which would provide more than 1,200 new homes, including a 20-storey tower, hotel, cinema, new shops, enhanced public realm and car park.

Weston Homes is seeking legal advice with a view to applying to the High Court asking for a Statutory Review under section 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Bob Weston, chairman and chief executive of Weston Homes, said: “We intend to fight Robert Jenrick’s ‘undemocratic and commercially unjustified’ decision in the High Court and seek to get his ruling overturned.

“The Secretary of State has gone against local democracy and the recommendations of a public inquiry, choosing to side with the NIMBY brigade who would rather see Norwich City Centre die than support a future for the City’s economy.”

Boris Johnson recently announced radical reforms to the planning system, designed to make it easier to build more homes.

New regulations offer greater freedom for buildings and land in town centres to change use without planning permission. But Weston has questioned how serious the prime minister actually is.

He contoured: “How does our prime minister Boris Johnson who is very vocal that housebuilders need to ‘build, build, build’ in order to hit the government’s housing delivery target of 300,000 homes justify his housing ministers’ anti-urban-renewal and anti-housebuilder descision?

“I thought our PM liked to position himself as ‘Boz-the-Builder’, instead his short-sighted Housing Minister is setting the PM up as the enemy of the housebuilding industry. The message it sends out to all housebuilders is – ‘don’t invest, don’t make planning applications, don’t plan for the future because this Conservative Government doesn’t support housing or the economy.”

Weston added: “At a time of extreme economic hardship and Norwich on the edge of a deep recession the secretary of state has chosen to refuse a massive investment opportunity for the city. The decision also flies-in-the-face of government policy on housing delivery and encouraging brownfield-land regeneration in order to protect the greenbelt.”

Weston points out that Alan Waters, the leader of Norwich City Council, has already gone on record and said that this overturns local democracy and the extensive public inquiry. The decision also seriously jeopardises the £15m of government Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF) money already allocated to accelerate the development of the site.

Weston concluded: “The government is not being co-ordinated, just as one body offers one of the highest levels of HIF funding in the country, the Secretary of State turns the scheme being offered funding away.”