BLAENAU Gwent council has been ordered to pay out costs after a planning inspector said it made a “significant oversight” in refusing plans to extend the lifetime of a solar farm.

The council’s planning committee rejected an application to extend the period of a planned solar farm planned at Wauntysswg Farm, Tredegar, from 30 to 40 years earlier this year.

Planning officers had recommended approval of the plans, warning in a report that refusing permission “may prove difficult to defend” as Welsh Government ministers had approved the previous application for a 30-year scheme.

Caerphilly council had also approved increasing the time period of the 143-acre solar farm which will extend into the county borough.

But Blaenau Gwent councillors rejected the plan, saying the 33 per cent increase in the operating period would make landscape and visual impacts of the development “unacceptably prolonged”.

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Concerns had been voiced over the impact of the application of the solar farm on the Tredegar Ironworks Cholera Cemetery, the only known cholera cemetery in Wales, as well as the wider landscape.

But, following an appeal by developers Elgin Energy EsCo, a planning inspector overturned the decision by Blaenau Gwent council.

The inspector’s report said that extending the timeframe by 10 years would result in a saving of 160,000 tonnes of CO2, one-third greater than the 30-year permission.

A report ordering the council to pay Elgin Energy the costs of appeal proceedings says councillors were “entitled to come to their own view” about the pros and cons of the development.

But it says that councils are “at risk of an award of costs being made against them where they refuse or object to particular elements of a scheme that the Welsh ministers have previously determined to be acceptable”.

The planning inspector’s report says there is “little evidence” the council gave the previous decision by Welsh ministers “due weight” when refusing the plans.

“This is a significant oversight which I consider amounts to irrationality in the decision-making process,” the report says.

“I therefore conclude that the council’s decision to refuse planning permission was unreasonable and resulted in an appeal which should not have been necessary.”

The inspector said “unreasonable behaviour resulting in unnecessary or wasted expense” had been demonstrated, justifying a full award of costs.