Controversial plans to construct a warehouse on a beauty spot in Reydon are to be revised and resubmitted, the company behind the scheme said this week.
Campaigners who oppose plans by Global Chair Components to build a 4,299sq m steel warehouse on a four-acre site next to its premises on the Fountain Way industrial estate hoped the proposals might be dropped when the application was withdrawn last month.
However, the firm's managing director, Darryl Dawson, said revised plans with extra information on the screening of the building would be submitted to Waveney District Council.
He said: 'Despite significant local support including approval from the Reydon Parish Council, we have been advised that the local landscape officer required more detail and an alternate suggestion to our original plan of a grassed bund topped with a hedgerow.
'We considered it better to withdraw and review our original application and are now consulting with a professional landscape architect in order to submit a revised plan.'
If approved, the proposals would see the business park extended onto agricultural land between Lowestoft Road and Rissemere Lane East, which is currently used for grazing animals.
The area, known locally as The Smere, is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), and plans to build on the site have been branded 'horrendous' by campaigners.
Robert Kelsey, Save the Smere group spokesman, said the area was highly valued by local people and overlooked the UK's second largest freshwater reed beds, which were a haven for rare birds.
He said: 'This proposal is contrary to Waveney's published policies – as has been pointed out by the Southwold and Reydon Society and the Suffolk Preservation Society.
'It also contradicts the national policy for developing on AONB land, and it has been timed to precede publication of the Reydon Village Plan that will, hopefully, demonstrate local opposition to any development on the Smere, of which this site is an integral part.'
He added: 'Waveney should be spending its energies finding an appropriate site for Global, of which there are many within the district. It should not be wasting time evaluating what will be a massive blot on the landscape and something that will permanently change the area and ruin the Smere.'
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