A COUPLE are ‘distraught’ after they lost their appeal to save their newly-built home from demolition after a planning mix-up.

The appeal to save the property in Mendlesham Green, near Stowmarket, was subject to a hearing in June.

But a planning inspector has now dismissed the appeal which will mean the property, which has been mothballed for two-and-a-half years, could now be demolished within the next six months.

Chris and Frances Huntingford’s agent John Peecock, of Needham Market-based planning agents Peecock Short, said the couple are now considering their options and are looking at the possibility of taking the case to the high court.

“They are extremely upset. They are quite obviously completely distraught about it,” Mr Peecock said.

In March 2009 a planning application had been approved by Mid Suffolk District Council for a four-bedroom house to be built after outline permission was granted in 2007.

But after the council received complaints that the property and its chimney were too tall, the authority sent planning officers out to investigate.

Mr Peecock said he was the first to identify that the house had been unintentionally positioned four metres away from the position approved in the planning permission after an oversight in the sale of the land.

He said that the original plans had been based on an out-of-date map which meant the land the owners bought did not match up to the land earmarked for the house in the planning agreement.

The council issued a temporary stop notice to the building work and then advised the owners to submit a retrospective planning application to resolve the matter.

But the Huntingfords were devastated when the district council turned the application down in January this year and issued an enforcement notice, despite planning officers recommending its approval.

Mr Peecock said that in his 40 years as a chartered town planner he had never come across another case like it.