A Court of Appeal ruling in favour of former Udecott chairman Calder Hart in 2023 has been upheld by the Privy Council, which ruled he was denied natural justice by the 2016 Las Alturas commission of enquiry (CoE) that blamed him for the collapse of the housing project in Morvant.

In a judgment on October 30, Lord Clark, with Lords Sales, Leggatt, Lady Rose and Lady Simler concurring, the Privy Council upheld the Appeal Court’s ruling that the Las Alturas commission of enquiry breached Hart’s right to procedural fairness by publishing adverse findings about him without first allowing him to respond.

Justices of Appeal Mark Mohammed, Peter Rajkumar and Maria Wilson had allowed Hart’s appeal of Justice David Harris’s dismissal of his complaints in a ruling in 2020.