COUNCILLORS have defied planners' advice and voted to give the go-ahead for a church to be built on the fringe of Knaresborough.
But members of a Knaresborough area planning committee of Harrogate Borough Council will have to re-examine the application at a future meeting because they went against a planning officer's advice to refuse the scheme.
Members of a religious group, known as the Wetherby Road Trust, applied to build a meeting place with a 129-space car park on a field near the junction of the Knaresborough bypass and Wetherby Road.
But planning officer Anne Smith said the site was outside the town's development limit and no exceptional case had been made for its development. She said it would have an adverse impact on the landscape's character and be unsustainable because of the need to travel there by private transport.
Councillors backed a plea by the trust for the church to be built after hearing the group was attracting a rising number of people.
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