A scheme to build a business park on land at Biss Farm in Trowbridge can go ahead, after a developer won their appeal.

The long-running saga of the future use of 12.1 hectares of land off West Ashton Road finally came to an end when a Government planning inspector ruled that Persimmon Homes could go ahead and build.

The developer received permission for a business park in 2005 but that consent expired.

When they tried to renew the permission in September 2011, Wiltshire Council refused, saying that without the Staverton Diversion and the Westbury Bypass, the proposal would have an adverse impact on the road network.

Planning inspector Jessica Graham has now ruled that nothing much had changed since the original permission was granted to warrant the refusal.

She said: “Permission for employment development was first granted as long ago as 1998, so I can understand local residents’ concerns as to why it has not yet taken place.

“However the council has always accepted the appellant’s explanation that delivery of employment uses on the appeal site is depending on the development of the adjoining residential site.

“This is because it must fund the infrastructure necessary to serve the employment site, including the required new East Trowbridge distributor road, the Hilperton relief road and improvements to West Ashton Road.”

Permission for 650 homes was granted in 2010 and work started in October 2011.

The adjoining business park, which lies 1.5km to the south east of Trowbridge town centre, cannot be built until improvements to the junctions of County Way and Westhoughton Road, and the Yarnbrook junction of the A363 and the A350 are made.

That means that any firms are unlikely to move in for at least four years.

Green campaigner Ken McCall, from the Campaign for a Better Trowbridge, said: “This is a defeat for us. It flies in the face of all the objections that were made.

“I find it difficult to imagine a business park plonked in the middle of this green space.

“Why are we putting tin sheds in a field like this? Of all the places in Trowbridge, this is the last place for this sort of development.”