A WATCHDOG has reprimanded a council over its decision to give planning permission for an extension to an industrial estate on farmland.

Local Government Ombudsman Patricia Thomas said Derwentside District Council was guilty of maladministration causing injustice when it approved 4.4 hectares of development next to Esh Winning Industrial Estate in 1999.

Council officers maintained it was a brownfield site despite the Durham committee of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) giving evidence that it was greenfield land and therefore could not be built on.

Mrs Thomas said that councillors would probably have refused permission if they had been properly advised.

The CPRE, which lodged the complaint, welcomed the ruling but faces another fight against further development of the estate.

Planning permission is being sought for a £1.3m, 4.3-hectare development to attract new firms and help the expanding Esh Partnership group of companies relocate on one site.

Durham County Council, Derwentside Council, Durham City Council, the Esh Partnership and Youngs Haulage are behind the scheme, which includes a new access road to Durham Road.

The county council says the original plan of 6.3 hectares has been scaled down after talks with residents and environmentalists.

The council's head of regeneration, Bob Ward, said: "It's vital to the local economy that hundreds of existing jobs are not lost in the Deerness Valley and the opportunity for new ones is seized.''

CPRE committee chairman Dr Shirley Goodyear said: "It is very much a hollow victory as the development is still going ahead.''

The Ombudsman is recommending that Derwentside Council compensate the CPRE by carrying out an environmental project in the village or pay the CPRE £5,000.

A spokesman said the council could not comment until councillors had considered the Ombudsman's report