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Maidstone Borough Council has had to pay £18,699 in costs to a Marden resident after it improperly granted planning permission for an 18-lodge holiday park.
The borough approved the planning application to grant Paul Body a change of use for a paddock below Oakhurst in Stilebridge Lane in December last year.
But 69-year-old Patricia Shave, who has lived opposite the site since 1993, contested the decision via a judicial review and the permission has now been quashed.
Her solicitors challenged the decision on three grounds.
The honourable Mr Justice Holgate supported the borough on two of the grounds but on the third found in favour of Mrs Shave.
Despite councillors having asked for detail about the design of the holiday lodges - which remain officially caravans in law - planning officers advised the committee meeting that they didn't have the power to refuse permission based on design or to impose design conditions to any grant of permission that they made.
Mr Justice Holman said this was "an error in law".
The borough's advocate attempted to argue that in any case the granting of planning permission should not be quashed, because even if the councillors had been properly advised, the permission would still have been granted.
Mr Justice Holman disagreed. He noted that several councillors had raised concerns about the design and it was possible that if they had been allowed to do so they would have imposed conditions on the design, and if an acceptable design was not forthcoming, they could have rejected planning permission altogether.
The decision was a victory for Mrs Shave and the 25 other residents who had objected to the planning application, but a hollow one.
Mrs Shave had spent £37,338 on legal fees fighting the case but the judge awarded her only half that sum on the basis that only one of her complaints was upheld.
Furthermore, the judge's decision has not put a permanent stop on the application.
Rather it has re-set the clock and the borough council's planning committee will now consider the application again, probably on Thursday, November 26.
Although the site is for a "holiday park", neighbours believe it will turn into a permanent caravan site.
Last time, to ensure the lodges did not become permanent homes, the council imposed a condition that the lodge should not become the tenant's main accommodation and that a register of those staying there be kept by the owners.
But no limit on the extent of time they should be allowed to stay was imposed and with no total closure of the site at any period of the year.
This is exactly the same condition that the council applied to the much larger Pilgrims Retreat caravan park in Harrietsham several years ago.
The outcome was that occupants there bought their "holiday" homes on the understanding that they could live there all year round.
This year the council began enforcement action at the park on other matters, with the net result that scores of mainly elderly residents are living in fear that they may be evicted from their homes because they are in breach of the "holiday" condition.
Application number 19/500271 refers.
