A proposed two-dwelling residential building on Oleander Lane, Devonshire, has been given the go-ahead, despite the objections of neighbours.Plans for the split level building, intended for an empty lot were first submitted last May by the Maknes Trust, and were revised twice before being approved by the Planning Board in December.However in January the board received a third party appeal, complaining that the proposal would overdevelop the lot, cause a lack of privacy for neighbouring properties and cause a disturbance because of the unnecessary use of a secondary access.According to a report by planning inspector Brian Field, the appellants had said the plans were very similar to an earlier proposal for the site which was rejected on appeal.In the previous appeal, Mr Field said a central point was that good development control requires more than a mere adherence to numerical data.It also argued that technical officers had submitted a board report that “lacked objectivity and contained both inaccurate and misleading information”.The original applicant responded that the appellant had selectively quoted the inspectors report and unfairly challenged the objectivity of the technical officers.Delivering his findings, Mr Field said: “Whilst I am entirely sympathetic to the appellants’ contention that planning decisions should not be based on the simple and formulaic application of policies and standards, which by implication is the suggestion that this is what happened in this case, I find it difficult to square such an observation with the apparently contradictory accusation of bias by the technical officers in the board report.“Put quite simply, you can’t have it both ways. Either technical officers behaved like robots slavishly following the procedures and standards laid down in the development plan when making their recommendation, or they exercised ‘considered’ professional judgement informed by prevailing protocols, policies and standards (what the appellants perceive as bias), which of course is how the planning process is supposed to work.”He described the board report as an excellent summary, and said if the appellants wished to seriously pursue any allegations of bias or procedural irregularity they should be referred to the Ombudsman.He recommended that the appeal be dismissed, saying that while the changes were modest in scale, they were significant in substance.Environment Minister Sylvan Richards subsequently reviewed the report and dismissed the appeal, granting conditional planning approval for the project.