WILTSHIRE Council has been accused of covering up its mistakes, after the parish council was told planning conditions it had been assured would be applied to a travellers' site in the village were seen to be unenforceable.

Semington Parish Council chairman Robert Oglesby accused the council of being unprofessional and said they had fobbed him off with ‘garbage’ excuses.

The site, just off the A350 Semington roundabout on the Devizes side, was given permission with conditions that fires could not be lit there and that it had to demolish an entrance built on Wiltshire Council land. But when Mr Oglesby complained fires were being lit there, the council told him there was nothing they could do.

Mr Oglesby said: “They have made a significant error and they are trying to cover it up. It was a contentious issue and therefore it should have been decided by Wiltshire councillors.

“The planning officer deemed it applicable with these conditions despite them not being enforceable.

“They just do not want to impose conditions that are hard for them to impose.

“We have written to our MP, to Baroness Scott, to a number of people in the Wiltshire Council and we expect them to act in a professional way, which means there should be some significant developments as a result of this.”

According to the National Planning Practice Guidance a condition cannot be imposed in order to remedy a pre-existing problem.

The parish council had received several complaints about uncontrolled waste burning there.

Mr Oglesby added: “In every private organisation heads would role for a mistake like this but here they just scoop it under the carpet.

“How can someone in the pay of the council not know the conditions that they are putting on an application?

“We are not happy and we would like that the planning department is taken to a scrutiny committee as they have not acted in a correct way.

“They should have known better than to say the conditions were acceptable when they did not know."

A Wiltshire Council spokesman said: “We have written to the complainant to explain what powers we do have to deal with statutory smoke nuisance. We have also visited the site and written to the site owner as well as referring the matter to the Environment Agency."We will continue to respond if notified of any further incidents.”