COUNCIL bosses face a £10,000 hospital bill after losing an argument over a mental health centre.

They were left licking their wounds when a Department of the Environment inspector ruled they had got it wrong when they rejected Burnley Health Trust's application for a resource centre in Dorset Street.

He upheld the trust's appeal against the council's refusal to grant planning permission and gave the centre the go-ahead.

Now the inspector, J.D.S. Gillis, has added cost to injury by ordering the council to pick up the tab for the full public appeal - because he says the authority's decision had been unreasonable.

That means the council will not only have to pay its own expenses - which include hiring a barrister to fight its corner - it will also have to meet the trust's costs, expected to be about £10,000.

The inspector ruled the new building would not cause significant harm to the character and appearance of the residential area.

He said the development would not badly harm living conditions of neighbours in terms of privacy, noise or disturbance, nor would it significantly harm the safety of road users in the area.

It is the second appeal hammering council planning chiefs have taken at the hands of the health trust.

Their rejection of plans for a drugs clinic at Westgate was also overturned on appeal, and the costs, again about £10,000, had to be met by Burnley council taxpayers.

Pendle Council suffered a similar fate when its refusal to allow the trust to set up a centre for eating disorders in Reedley was thrown out on appeal and some of the health side's costs were awarded against the authority.

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