AN ongoing battle to rebuild a wooden holiday chalet in Hawkswick, which was razed to the ground by fire last year, could be over.

This week, the Yorkshire Dales National Park's planning committee agreed to go against officer recommendation and support the latest application for Town End Cottage.

It proposes demolishing the existing fire damaged single storey stone and timber dwelling and replacing it with a similar two-bedroom single storey dwelling. It would have almost exactly the same floor area, mass and design.

The original cottage was built in the early 20th century by Mr Jowett, the designer and manufacturer of the Javelin car and Bradford van.

Until the fire on August 6, it was used as holiday accommodation by David Shaw and his family.

Several previous applications to rebuild it have been rejected, with planners saying they wanted an amended scheme that would be more sympathetic to the surroundings.

Mr Shaw's agent Brian Barden told this week's meeting what was now proposed was to "create a facsimile of the building that was on site prior to the fire".

He argued that it was not "new build" as it was the replacement of a dwelling that already existed and had been damaged in an accident.

"That dwelling house had been there for very many years and has been in the applicant's family for 60 years. There will be no change to the character of the countryside," Mr Barden added.

Member John Sayer said he was very surprised to find that replacement dwellings were precluded from the Local Plan.

He added that the local parish council was quite happy with the latest application which was a reconstruction on the same footprint of the original building.

However, member Jerry Pearlman pointed out that when the chalet was first erected there were not the planning policies in place that there were now and that if there had been it would not have been built. He added that here was an opportunity to rectify a fault.

He said that the application before the committee was to create something that did not exist at the moment and therefore it would require permission as a new dwelling.