National Trust: Council apologises for fake holiday park

The local authority had published an application on its website for 100 new holiday lodges in Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne. 

Although no substantial documents were uploaded, the application said it would come with outdoor hot tubs, swimming pool complex with water slides and outdoor rapids, bar, restaurant and shops. 

The Echo spotted this and approached the National Trust for more details on what appeared to be its bizarre new proposals to turn the historic estate into a holiday park. 

However, a spokeswoman said the application is nothing to do with them and that it was not a real application. 

Fake planning application for 100 new holiday lodges (Image: Google)

Dorset Council was approached for some answers and a spokesman said the planning application was uploaded to the website during “routine maintenance” of its online registration system. 

He said: "Part of this process is to ensure everything is working properly, so we occasionally input fictional applications into the system to test. 

“This was one of those test applications, as evidenced by the application number (TEST/JRW2). It was live for a week, had no related documents published with it, and had a council officer listed as the agent. 

“The content of the application is entirely fictional, but the details needed to be realistically populated for our testing to be effective, including different scales of sites, and various types of properties. 

“We intended to remove this application before the system went back online, and we are sorry for any confusion caused by our inadvertently publishing this test application on our online system for a short period of time.” 

The fake planning application was taken down shortly after the newspaper approached Dorset Council on Thursday, June 13.

Approved plans that are real for Kingston Lacy and were recently given approval earlier this year includes an upgraded car park with disabled parking spaces and better drainage in the car park as well as improvements to the overflow car park.  

Meanwhile a new welcome building is to be built to mitigate queuing as visitors come into the property built in the 1600s just outside of Wimborne.  

Also in the plans is a new changing room facility, toilets with better provision for wheelchair and buggy users in one of the buildings in the laundry courtyard and a quiet room.