THE victors in a long-running dispute over Southampton’s £2m Medina Mosque have pledged to sort out planning breaches.

Southampton Medina Mosque Trust Ltd (SNNTL), which has run the incomplete St Mary’s Mosque since 2002, said it now hoped the ruling by a top judge would usher in a new era of harmony in the Muslim community.

Southampton City Council went to the High Court to settle the ownership of the site more than ten years after the first brick was laid. Senior members of the Muslim community fell out after a building agreement was signed in 1997 under which the council sold the Compton Walk site below market value.

The judge’s ruling paves the way for the completion of the 1,000-capacity mosque, the largest in the south, and for its long-planned minaret to at last rise over the city.

SMMTL secretary Rashid Brora, inset, said there had been “no winners”

in the dispute which he said had cost the Muslim community “a lot of money” but he stressed the mosque was “open to everybody”. “We’re hoping that everyone will now forget what’s happened in the past and start working together to build the mosque’s reputation, to be seen as part of the community of Southampton, an integral part, that gets on with all other faiths, and positively contributes to the whole of Southampton society.”

After a costly nine-day hearing, Mr Justice Davis ruled the original mosque trust had been “superseded” by SMMTL, a charitable company. Retrospective plans were now being drawn up to resolve outstanding planning breaches. A council spokesmen said parking on site would need to be reduced.