A FRESH application to build a controversial animal incinerator might be made after the North Yorks Moors National Park conceded that the original scheme was defective in law.

The authority has withdrawn from a two-day hearing in London's High Court into the scheme at the Charltons, near Guisborough, east Cleveland.

Legal experts from the national park considered the plan, which had been approved by the authority, and concluded it was defective in law.

The protestors' solicitor, Andrew Lockley, said: "We are delighted that we have got a sensible result without great expense to public funds."

He said the National Park had contacted him to say the planning application was defective in law.

"The outcome is that the planning permission for the incinerator will have to be quashed as if it never existed," he said.

A spokesman for the national park said: "The national park have decided to concede the challenge made by the objectors on just one aspect of one grounds of the challenge."

But Richard Barton, solicitor acting for the applicant JE Noddings and Son, said: "Our initial view is that the national park conceded on a technicality which can be overcome by some sort of additional application. There will be a further application."

An application will be made to the High Court within two weeks to quash the scheme.

Permission to build an incinerator on the slaughterhouse site was granted by the national park earlier this year.

Protestors argued that the authority should have commissioned a report into the environmental impact of the scheme before reaching a decision and took the issue to the High Court.