Jenrick’s department directed Norwich City Council to refuse the planning permission for the Anglia Square scheme despite a public enquiry backing the scheme.

The project will provide 1,200 new homes, including a 20-storey tower, hotel, cinema, new shops, enhanced public realm and car park.

Weston Homes will now apply to the High Court asking for a review of the decision which has incensed Chairman & Chief Executive Bob Weston.

He 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.

“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.

“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.”