A COLD war appears to have opened up over the selling of ice cream beside a beauty spot.

Just months after a North York Moors National Park Authority application to site a refreshments facility at the Hole of Horcum was passed by its planning committee, its officers have recommended a scheme for a potential rival business at the tourist hotspot be rejected.

Officers said the venture by Whitby-based entrepreneurs Larraine Burgess and Tony Cervone beside its Saltergate car park would result in “an unacceptable concentration of commercial activity”.

The scheme has generated extra attention due to existing issues surrounding car parking and crossing the A169 to the huge natural amphitheatre, regarded among the park’s most spectacular sites.

The park authority’s officers said another refreshments facility at the site, which is used by more than one million vehicles a year, would result in unacceptable visual clutter and create potential conflict with other car park users.

The planning officers added a second ice cream business would affect the character of the area.

Ahead of a planning application being decided by the park authority, Lockton Parish Council said Mr Cervone’s ice-cream scheme was “a more favourable option to the one park authority granted themselves a couple of months ago”.

Park authority officers said its move to get planning permission for a refreshments business along the back edge of the car park had come almost two years after planning consent for an ice-cream business which had existed beside the car park since 1965 had expired.

A spokesman for Mr Cervone said: “Although officers knew that the applicant’s permission had expired at the time the authority’s own proposal was under consideration, an officer did not write to Ms Burgess and Mr Cervone about the expiry until the day before the date on the planning permission for its own site, by when it would be too late to make representations.”

The parish council said it had objected to the authority’s refreshments scheme as it would reduce the number of parking spaces at the car park and encourage parking on the grass verges, aggravating issues in the area.

A parish council spokeswoman said it supported Mr Cervone’s refreshments scheme as it would be behind some trees and off the car park site, making it “much less prominent” than the one the park authority had granted itself permission for.