An error in Manx Utilities’ planning application for a new sewage plant in the west of the island meant it should never have gone to a public inquiry.

The island’s regional sewage treatment strategy has been thrown into disarray after a planning inspector recommended refusal of plans for a new works at Glenfaba House, south of Peel.

Manx Utilities has now withdrawn the application although it insists it is still committed to delivering its regional strategy of which a new treatment works for Peel is an ’integral part’.

The Glenfaba House site ’remains firmly in our thinking and may yet form part of a solution’, Manx Utilities executive director Adrian Dobbins said in an email to the planning department, seen by the Isle of Man Courier.

But the Courier has also seen a letter from the Cabinet Office to the director of planning which shows that there should never have been an inquiry at all into the Glenfaba House plan.

The letter to Jennifer Chance dated December 14 reveals the Cabinet Office had advised the Council of Ministers of an ’error in the application submission’.

The application had stated that the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture had an interest in the site, as partial landowner.

But it turned out that DEFA didn’t have any vested interest in the site and so should not have referred it to CoMin to determine - ie there should have been no inquiry.

Instead planning application PA19/00462/B should have been decided upon by the planning committee in the normal way.

Ministers agreed there was no other good reason why the application should be determined by CoMin, saying it did not ’raise considerations of general importance to the island’.

After taking legal advice, CoMin agreed that the application should be remitted back to DEFA, acknowledging that ’had the application been factually accurate, the normal planning committee decision process would have been undertaken’.

It decided it would be appropriate for the inspector’s report to be published and for this to be the one presented to the planning committee as the planning inspector would be acting as a planning case officer rather than an appeal inspector in such cases.

Campaigner Trevor Cowin, who was one of those who had made a written submission to the application, said: ’I have to say that in my many dealings with government in recent years I’ve never seen such a "bugger’s muddle".’

He said the planning application has been withdrawn because the public inquiry was unlawful.

Mr Cowin said he had been keen to see the new works completed to stop the dumping of raw sewage into Peel bay but had previously raised concerns about the decision-making process.

He has now written to Manx Utilities chairman Tim Baker asking for details of the full cost of the aborted proposal to construct the sewage treatment works at Glenfaba House.

Mr Baker has said that the application would likely have gone to independent review through the appeals process anyway.

Recommending refusal of the application Mr Sims said the proposed works would have an adverse impact on the countryside, resulting in the loss of woodland and wildlife habitats of local and national importance.

The development would also lead to potential dangerous lorry movements on the bend at Glenfaba Bridge.

And he said there were ’reasonable and acceptable’ alternatives to the Glenfaba House site.

Glenfaba House was bought by Manx Utilities in 2017 for £600,000 as the site for the new treatment works.

The old mansion house was demolished in April last year before the authority had even applied for planning consent for the new works.