Campaigners against the £2bn King’s Cross Central development have today launched judicial review proceedings in the High Court.

The King’s Cross Think Again campaign is seeking to get developer Argent’s recently granted King’s Cross Central development planning permission quashed.

Argent was given the Green light for a £2bn regeneration of the area at the end of last year that will include 4.5m sq ft (418,060 sq m) of offices, 1,946 flats, 500,000 sq ft (46,451 sq m) of shops and other facilities

Campaigners claim that councillors were wrongly advised at the Camden development control meeting which gave final consent to the outline scheme last November.

The campaigners say that members of the committee were wrongly ‘told they could not reconsider the provisional consent given by their predecessors in March 2006’.

Leigh Day & Co has been instructed to launch the proceedings. The law firm will say that particular concerns include:

• The ‘inadequate’ energy and environmental standards proposed for the scheme, ‘which could instead be making an exemplary contribution to reducing global warming’

• Demolition of key heritage buildings, such as Stanley North and Culross Buildings, ‘without adequate grounds’

• The need for a better balance between big corporate office blocks and smaller, more diverse, enterprises and housing

The campaigners and their lawyers are hoping that the case will be heard within three months.

If the judicial review succeeds, the planning application would have to go back to committee for full reconsideration.