Liverpool City Council has voted to proceed with demolition of the city's Welsh streets area which formed part of the previous government's housing market renewal pathfinder initiative.
Demolition of the 300 Victorian terraced houses has been the subject of an increasingly bitter campaign of opposition.
Communities secretary Eric Pickles has refused to intervene using the little known Public Request to Order Disposal route urged by campaigners, but he said the Council should listen to local peoples' views.
But he has imposed an Article 25 stop order requiring that no planning consent be issued to enable him to consider the request for a screening direction to consider if an environmental impact assessment is required.
"Up to now the Council has claimed that the demolition of nearly 300 houses in the area ‘will not give rise to any significant effects on the environment'," said SAVE Britain's Heritage which opposes demolition.
"SAVE has challenged this - stating that the Council has failed to take into account the the effect of the wider HMR scheme, the loss of embodied energy, the pollution and noise impacts of demolition, the loss of material assets and the loss of cultural heritage."
