A DECISION to reject plans for a budget hotel has been described as “a load of rubbish”.

As reported in the Crow last month, South Cambridgeshire District Council turned down an application to build a 70-room hotel, on the site of the derelict Horse and Groom pub on the A505 near Litlington, because they said the building would have a “significant adverse impact on the surrounding landscape.”

Members of Royston Town Council’s planning committee expressed their surprise at the decision when it was discussed at their meeting on Monday.

Cllr Lynn Berry, chairman of the planning committee, said: “What a load of rubbish. How can it have an adverse effect on the local area when it was going to take that awful building away?”

And Cllr F John Smith said: “This decision is extremely unhelpful, especially as the site in question has no effect on the parishes of Steeple Morden or Litlington.

“It makes me feel that decisions on any land trapped between the A505 and the railway line should be deferred to Hertfordshire.”

The committee resolved to write to the district council expressing what Cllr Berry described as their “extreme disatisfaction” at the news.

The applicant, the Findlay Duthie partnership, told the Crow they were yet to decide whether to submit revised plans for the Horse and Groom site.