A senior Tory politician overruled a planning inspector to give the Spurs stadium the green light, a report reveals.

Planning Inspector David Nicolson said in his report that the council should not be granted the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) it needed to allow the football club to begin building.

The CPO was needed by the council to relocate Archway Sheet Metal, whose owners want to remain in their current location.

But Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles overturned the decision.

Mr Nicolson expressed concerns over the lack of affordable housing in the plans, arguing that most public benefit to come from the football club’s development would be funded by public money.

Mr Pickles also expressed concerns over the total lack of affordable housing present in the plans.

He wrote to Tottenham Hotspur, the council and Archway in December 2013 to ask why it was necessary to waive the standard requirement for new developments to have 50 per cent affordable housing.

The council argued that the there was a “compelling public interest” case for confirming the CPO.

Mr Pickles, after thinking “very carefully”, said that the overall improvements to social and economic well-being brought by granting the CPO outweighed the need to protect the “human rights” of the Josif family, who own Archway Sheet Metal.

He also disagreed with Mr Nicolson’s view that the fact that social and economic improvements were being funded by the public purse, rather than by Spurs, weakened the public interest argument.