The developers of a proposed eco town in Warwickshire made ‘unsubstantiated and untrue claims’ about its site, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
An advert for the proposed development has been banned because St Modwen Properties and the Bird Group made four unsubstantiated claims which the ASA believed were likely to mislead the public.
MP Peter Luff made the initial complaint over the regional newspaper adverts. The developers said the Middle Quinton eco town would create 4,700 jobs and 6,000 homes, that the 258ha site near Stratford-upon-Avon was planned for ‘under-used brownfield’ land, and a £100M investment for its infrastructure would deliver a new western bypass for Stratford.
The developers said they did not expect the public to take the claims as ‘factual certainties’, but the ASA ruled that they were presented as such. The ASA found that although the developers might have believed their claims, there was not enough evidence to back them up. The jobs and homes figures were only estimates, and the building of the bypass would still be decided by local councils, regardless of the development going ahead.
The watchdog also said that a decision on whether the whole of the site was brownfield or not was yet to be made.
The ASA said the advert breached rules on substantiation and truthfulness, and ordered it to be scrapped and the claims not to be repeated.
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