THE planning advice which led to City of York Council fighting an expensive public inquiry over Coppergate Riverside is to come under scrutiny.

Council leader Steve Galloway told the Evening Press that a full report would be prepared on the circumstances leading up to yesterday's rejection of the £60 million scheme for shops and apartments between Clifford's Tower and Piccadilly.

It would look into whether the authority's own planning officers had correctly interpreted central government planning guidance for such schemes - guidance which he said contained some 'grey areas'.

If it turned out that they had not, he said there might have to be a review of the council's planning procedures in future.

Last year's lengthy planning inquiry which led to yesterday's government decision to reject Land Securities' project cost council taxpayers £220,000.

Coun Galloway said: "I would expect that we would look very carefully at what the Secretary of State and the inspector have said. Particularly, we will look at the technical planning advice that we were given."

He indicated that the way future planning applications were handled in York could be affected.

Meanwhile, Land Securities have no intention of abandoning their efforts to build new shops in York, despite yesterday's massive setback.

The developers claimed the case for further retail space in the city had been "proven," but did not indicate whether the extra shops should be built on the Coppergate Riverside site.

Chief executive of development Francis Salway said: "Over a long period we have experienced many delays in the planning process while new planning guidance has been introduced, new and influential planning bodies such as CABE have been created and new approaches to city centre redevelopment have emerged.

"In these circumstances, we believe that we now have an opportunity to reflect on the Inspector's conclusions, and work closely with City of York Council, English Heritage, the local community and others to develop a process to allow us to move forward from here, as we have done so successfully in Exeter recently."

He claimed that the company's overall investment to date in Coppergate Riverside had been "small."

Updated: 10:55 Thursday, September 11, 2003