AMENDED plans for 13 cottages on the site of Bugler's engineering works in Hogshill Street, Beaminster, have failed to win the backing of the town council's planning committee.

Councillors think the plans to convert the existing buildings to four homes and create nine new ones with garages, car ports and parking and a new vehicular access should be rejected.

They want to see the site retained for industrial and commercial use.

After the meeting last week, Coun John Spooner said it was sad that although people living nearby were up in arms about the proposals no-one had turned up to the meeting.

"Buglers has been there for many years and never done any harm," he said, adding that the firm had been a valuable asset and to lose the site to unaffordable homes was not a good idea.

He said he would like to see the showroom converted into four units with affordable flats above. Putting affordable housing on the site would make the loss of a commercial site less of an indigestible pill to swallow, he said.

"At a conservative estimate these houses will be a quarter of a million pounds. There's nobody running around Beaminster with that sort of money of the age of 22 to 25. Really and truly we rely on West Dorset District Council to give us a lead in this matter.

"We are merely asking that this should be thought of in a more socially organised way. We are not trying to deprive Buglers of the right to sell their land or to get their money for it, what we are concerned with is that it should be lost from what it has been.

"Other than aesthetics and social implication the sewage is an enormous problem developing in the town. We are having inspections regularly by the council people and lorries come regular to the pumping station to pump sewage out. This can't help."

Coun Spooner suggested it would be a good idea if the district council bought the land itself.

Councillors also felt that Bugler's plans to relocate the business to Lower Barrowfield Farm on the Broadwindsor Road should be rejected, saying it would be detrimental to the visual and rural amenity of the area of outstanding natural beauty.

They also argued it was development in open countryside and was outside any defined development boundary.