A bizarre row broke out on social media this week surrounding an application for a camping site in Groudle.

The row took place after the applicants Anchard Leisure, which wants to build 20 timber pods for tourist accommodation, began seeking public support for the scheme on Facebook.

In a post, issues were raised by members of the public about issues raised by Groudle Glen Railway (GGR) volunteers to the planning application (19/00830/B) which led to a comment from the page saying it has the support of GGR directors.

In a statement from its directors, GGR said that it was ’disappointed to note that statements are being made by the page administrators suggesting GGR is complicit in its support of the scheme’.

The statement added: ’The directors of GGR have been in discussions with the applicants since October 2017 and various meetings have been convened.

’At these meetings, various schemes have been discussed with the applicants, including the purchase by GGR of a parcel of land owned by the applicants to install new storage containers and the purchase of land for an access track to Sea Lion Rocks Cafe.

’These were intended to be commercial transactions and talks were suspended when it became apparent that the applicants were unwilling to commit to an agreement until planning permission was granted for the site. Indeed, the applicants attempted to make the transactions conditional upon GGR’s unconditional support for the planning application.’

While the GGR is ’neutral’ on the plans, it has said it would ’prefer the field to remain agricultural, as per the original zoning’.

However, it did also note that the plan is ’less intrusive than the majority of other alternatives’.

The statement added: ’We are disappointed that the applicants have elected to utilise the informal discussions which have taken place to imply that GGR actively supports the scheme when it has been made very clear to them that this was not and could not be the case.’

However, in response to this, the page set up for the ’glamorous camping’ application said: ’We have a letter from them confirming that we would receive a letter of support at the conclusion of the transaction of the piece of land for them to build an access road to the Sea Lions Rock cafe.

’The only reason that the transaction did not pass through was because our own legal advice was to secure the passage of the planning before complicating the issue with a land purchase.

’Of course our discussions were with the committee members, and at this stage we do not know who is posting these statements, but we can without doubt, evidence the comments made between those party to our discussions, including email conversations.’