CONTROVERSIAL plans to spend £120,000 on public art for a business park have been scrapped.

Councillors have refused for the second time an application to put up eight 50ft steel rods at the gateway to the multi-million pound industrial site at Queen's Meadow Business Park, Hartlepool.

Government development agency One NorthEast provided the council with funding to build the "sea rods" sculpture.

An application for the site, on one of the two main routes into town, was turned down last year because councillors feared drivers would be distracted by the poles.

The scheme was altered and a fresh bid was lodged. But councillors yesterday refused it again on grounds of road safety - despite assurances that it was not an issue.

One member of Hartlepool Borough Council's planning committee accused his colleagues of jeopardising the future of the business park, which has stood empty for more than a year.

Labour councillor Moss Boddy said: "Queen's Meadow is a strategic site and one of the fears I have is that we are not committed to promoting this, because every time we try to get the gateway feature, people come up with all sorts of spurious reasons why it should not happen.

"I fear this gateway site will become the nemesis of the site and we will lose the funding for the whole thing because we will be seen as not wanting it.

"We are dicing with losing a vast amount of public money. Not the £115,000 we won in the bid for the public art, but the millions that are earmarked through the strategic plan for the industrial and business location here, and we have to take that into consideration."

Council planning experts had recommended approval because they felt the rods - designed by Scottish artist Donald Urquhart - would not affect road safety.

Principal planning officer Roy Merrett told members there had been no increase in accidents since the Angel of the North was erected alongside the A1 at Gateshead despite the fears of local people.

Coun Ray Waller called for the money to be spent on artwork which was less of a distraction and more reflected the heritage of the former shipbuilding and steelmaking town.

A council spokesman said planners would speak to One NorthEast to see if an alternative project could be developed.

A One NorthEast spokesman said: "Although Hartlepool council's application to install artworks at the entrance to the site has been refused, it does not detract from the overall investment that One NorthEast and the Tees Valley Partnership have already made in this £5m regeneration scheme and which we are committed to making in the future."