Councillors are being invited to contribute towards an £18,000 bill for the cost of a public inquiry after a decision they made on a planning application was overturned by a Government inspector.

City of York Council was issued with the bill after a lengthy planning wrangle over the height of York House, in Hodgson Lane, Upper Poppleton.

Their decision to refuse retrospective planning permission, when the roof was built around three metres too high, was against the advice of council officers and later overturned by the planning inspector who ruled that, "the council acted unreasonably."

Councillors at last night's City of York Council planning committee meeting agreed a proposal put forward by the committee's chair, Coun Dave Merrett, that the councillors who made the decision should be invited to contribute towards the cost of the bill.

This would involve the five members of the Planning and Transport North West sub committee who voted to reject the retrospective planning permission.

He was responding in part to the concerns of architect Matthew Laverack, who spoke during the public participation section of the meeting.

Mr Laverack said: "There is no way this sum can be met from planning fees.

"The planning department is already over budget and so the charges will ultimately fall on council tax payers.

"I propose that those individual councillors who caused this debacle in the first place should now face up to the consequences of their actions. They should agree to meet these costs out of their allowances."

Coun Martin Brumby said: "I think we have a very good record in York of being guided by our officers. It seems most unfortunate that on this occasion we seem to have played to the gallery and finished up costing the council tax payers a lot of money, plus putting us all in a somewhat invidious position."

Councillor John Boardman said: "It would be wrong to compel any member of this authority to pay money unless legal advice said that they should be compelled to do so." But he went on to say that the members in question should be able to make a contribution if they felt the need to do so.

Meanwhile Roy Templeman, York's director of environment and development, said the department was seeking to make compensatory savings to cover the bill.