DISCOVERY LED TO IT BEING TREATED AS A NEW SITE BID ...AND REJECTED

A CARAVAN park's bid to expand led to the discovery that planning permission did not exist for the site.

- By DALE SPRIDGEON

A planning application was lodged with Cyngor Gwynedd to expand the Berth Ddu caravan park near Abersoch to allow 15 touring caravans on the site.

There are seven plots currently on the site, at Bwlchtocyn.

However, planning bosses found that the site had only ever had permission for five caravans through an exemption certificate.

This certificate had expired, meaning there was no planning permission in place for the site to operate.

Planners therefore considered the site on the basis of it being a new development, and turned it down during a meeting on Monday [July 14].

The application, submitted by John Evans, of Evans Caravan & Camping Ltd, was for a patch of prime agricultural land in the Llŷn Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Llŷn and Enlli Landscape of Outstanding Historic Interest.

The proposed site had also been graded as "Class II good quality agricultural land", considered among the "best and most versatile" which should be "protected as a finite resource for the future," planning officer Sian Dafydd said.