A CONTROVERSIAL animal incinerator has been granted planning permission by a national park authority - for the second time.

The first application by Edward Noddings to build the incinerator at the Stable House Industrial Estate, at Charltons, near Guisborough, east Cleveland, was approved by the North Yorkshire Moors National Park Authority.

But local residents applied for an injunction to prevent the incinerator being built.

The High Court judge at the hearing in London did not impose an injunction, but he obtained a legal undertaking that no carcasses would be burnt in the immediate future and ordered a two-day hearing into the dispute at a date to be set in August.

But the National Park Authority later withdrew the scheme from the two-day High Court hearing after it conceded that the scheme was defective in law.

Mr Noddings resubmitted an application for the incinerator and yesterday the authority's planning committee gave planning permission a second time to allow the large animal incinerator to be be built and used on the site where a slaughterhouse and meat recovery business has operated for many years.

Chief planning officer Val Dilcock acknowledged local people's concerns but said it was not felt the incinerator would harm the character of the area or residents' health.

But protestor John Tombs said he would continue to fight. "I am angry that they didn't listen to the residents and I don't think our health concerns have been taken into consideration," he said. "I am disappointed that it wasn't thrown out altogether.

"But I'm not worried that it will go ahead because I think it will go to the High Court again."

Mr Noddings was unavailable for comment yesterday.