IT could be back to the drawing board for the major £2.5m project to restore Pembrokeshire's historic Blackpool Mill to its Victorian heyday.

The scheme - being put forward by the nearby Bluestone National Park Resort - wants to transform the Grade II Listed building near Canaston Bridge into a "heritage tourist facility".

However, National Park planners are recommending refusal of the development, which they say is "insensitively and unsympathetically sited within the landscape."

They have also spoken out against the proposed narrow gauge railway, considering it as "little more than the creation of a theme park attraction without any real connection to the history of the locality."

Two planning applications are due to be considered by the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority's development management committee on Wednesday May 10.

One includes conversion and restoration of the mill and ancillary buildings; construction of the narrow-gauge steam railway, all-weather events barn and car parking, and the other is for a land train route connecting Bluestone with the mill site.

The officer's report to the meeting stated: "Whilst it is acknowledged that the development will result in an economic benefit to the area and will restore a Grade II Listed building, the harmful impacts on the special qualities of the National Park and the setting of the listed buildings are not outweighed by the economic factors."

The committee is being recommended to refuse the main application because of its "detrimental visual impact on the locality, and harm to the special qualities of the National Park".

The report continued: "The proposed development will result in a significant loss to the sense of remoteness and tranquillity of the area and will be insensitively and unsympathetically sited within the landscape."

The principle of the land train - proposed to be a Land Rover towing carriages, as operates at the Bluestone resort - was considered to be "broadly acceptable".

But because the level of detail provided to date was "insufficient" to ensure there would be no harm to protected species, trees and landscape.

*For more on this story, see next week's Western Telegraph.