Skate Park, Tennis Courts and Bowling Green. Peel Promenade

A businessman who wanted to build pop-up accommodation on Peel Promenade has criticised government opposition to the plans as ’unhelpful’.

Duke Events Ltd has withdrawn its planning application for a ’Sunset Village’ on the site of the former swimming pool on Marine Parade.

It had wanted to install 45 en-suite cabins, like those used for the TT pop-up village in Douglas , for the summer.

Chief executive Peter Duke disputed the Department of Infrastructure’s suggestion there would have been parking problems.

’I had three government departments looking for problems and in some cases getting it very wrong in their responses to the planning application. Everybody was looking for problems, not solutions.’

He said that the Department for the Environment, Food and Agriculture said the area was zoned for recreation, which was ’completely wrong’.

He added: ’I thought we had an absolutely simple proposal to make good use of a site at the end of the prom which is unused - a flat piece of concrete covered in AstroTurf and a derelict skate park adjacent to an unused tennis court.

’We could have made some use of it for tourism and bring 11,000 bed nights to a town that’s got so many great facilities but hardly anywhere to stay.’