A SHAVINGTON parish councillor who highlighted serious errors with Cheshire East Council’s planning website has received an apology from the authority.

Councillor Bill McIntyre noticed he was among fourteen objectors to a new slurry pit off the A500 that had incorrectly been listed as supporting the scheme.

Initially, Cheshire East Council claimed that the error lay with the people completing the online form.

In an email to CEC councillor David Brickhill, who passed on Cllr McIntyre’s concerns, CEC chief executive Mike Suarez said: “The form provides three options – for either supporting, objecting or commenting on an application.

“In these cases it appears that residents may have overlooked this part of the form and so the default setting of ‘support’ has remained unaltered.

“Although this may appear that their views are being misrepresented, in practice it is the content of the submitted comments that really matters.”

They added: “I am advised we have tested our systems to check that it is working properly and have found no problem with its operation.”

But Cllr McIntyre wasn’t satisfied with the response and provided a print-out of his submitted consultation form to prove that he had indeed clicked the box marked ‘object to the proposal’.

Cheshire East has now apologised to Cllr McIntyre and has said that while the planning site now appears to working correctly, they are running further checks to make sure.

Cllr McIntyre is among those opposing the creation of the ‘slurry lagoon’.

The planning application has received dozens of objections from residents raising health and safety concerns over the proposal.

Developers argue that the lagoon is necessary to provide capacity for a nearby farm.