Holiday lodge development near Filey unanimously refused after councillors say area already has enough caravan sites

Scarborough councillors heard the plans put forward by businessman Wayne Low, who bought nearby The Bay Filey site in 1998, would "ruin Hunmanby Gap".

Objector Nigel Clark told the meeting the development on 13.78 hectares of arable land, which includes a reception facility, off Sands Road would be "highly visually intrusive" and would give the appearance of urbanisation in the area.

He said it would see a further increase of the "straggle" of holiday sites along the coast, adding: "There's no shortage of holiday accomodation. It is simply unnecessary."

Coun Roberta Swires said Sands Road was very narrow and the volume of traffic and people on it in the summer made it dangerous.

She said refusal was "the only way", adding: "We have The Bay which keeps extending, extending, we really don't need any more caravan sites around this beautiful area.

"It starts off very small and extends and extends like The Bay which is a shame."

Officers said they considered the scheme a "major protrusion" of development into the open countryside and said proposed mitigation would not offset the impact, adding that it would "completely change the character of the area of being an open rolling landscape of arable fields."

They said: "Any benefits to the local tourism economy are not considered to outweigh the harm to the wider coastal landscape."

Natural England is in the process of launching an examination of designating the Yorkshire Wolds an area of outstanding natural beauty and Coun Mike Cockerill said there had already been a suggestion that this area should be included.

A resident said afterwards they were delighted with the result, and believed an appeal would be "throwing good money after bad".

He said: "The officer's report said it was fundamentally flawed, we can't fine-tune it to make it acceptable because it's in the middle of an agricultural field in an area that's possibly scheduled to be in the area of outstanding natural beauty. I would have thought (an appeal) would have been throwing good money after bad, but you never know."

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