PEMBROKESHIRE Coast National Park Authority's failure to provide the judge with enough financial information has left the taxpayer to pick up a legal bill for many thousands of pounds.

Ordinarily, having lost their legal challenge to the Park Authority's decision to grant Bluestone planning consent, the Council for National Parks would be liable for the Authority's costs - amounting to well over £25,000.

However, the judge, Mr Justice Jacks, made no such order for costs. The CNP say that was because the challenge was made in the public interest - but that's far from the full story.

Ruth Chambers, CNP's head of policy, said "CNP had presented arguments to the judge that the challenge made to the Bluestone planning decision was in the public interest.

"The judge has accepted this and has also taken CNP's charitable status into account in making no order for costs in respect of the developer or the National Park Authority.

"We warmly welcome the judge's decision on costs, which is a trail-blazing decision for all those fighting for better access to the legal justice system."

However, while the judge accepted "it might be appropriate" not to make an order for costs, his main reason for letting the Park Authority pick up their own legal bill was the fact that they provided him with no financial information.

In his ruling, the judge said: "It is submitted for the Park Authority that it is a small authority with limited resources but I have not been informed as to the amount of costs which the Park Authority has incurred, nor, and more importantly, as to the size of its resources.

"No financial information has been provided so I cannot give any real weight to this factor."

The Park Authority said that if the judge had asked for more information, he would have been given it.

A spokesman said: "Submissions on costs were made to the judge by the National Park Authority's counsel, as is normal practice in such hearings.

"No request was made for additional information. Had further details been sought they would have been provided immediately.

"The authority is seeking counsel's comments on the judge's ruling and advice as to how the authority may proceed.

"As previously stated by our chairman, Cllr Stephen Watkins, the authority is extremely disappointed that we have not been awarded our costs of successfully defending this legal challenge."

The Bluestone developers will also have to foot their own legal costs. They had also submitted a claim to get their costs back from the CNP, but the judge ruled: "I accept that the developers had an important investment to defend but I do not think that they have succeeded in showing that they had a separate interest which was sufficiently different from that of the Park Authority to entitle them to their costs."