Malton councillors have vetoed the controversial plan to build a retailing complex, petrol filling station, offices and complex on part of the town’s Wentworth Street car park.

They have also asked Ryedale District Council not to give approval for the rifle club building on the site to be demolished until a decision is made on the major scheme.

Ryedale District Council, which owns the car park, is working with GMI Holbeck Land of Leeds to redevelop the site and to use the proceeds from the sale to fund capital schemes.

Malton town clerk Mike Skehan said the main issues to be considered by the town authority’s planning consultant, Kathryn Jukes, were over-provision of retailing, traffic access, potential nuisance and anti-social behaviour, environmental impact, public opposition and the threat to Malton’s economy and town centre.

He believed the Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities, Eric Pickles, should decide the application, not Ryedale council.

He said: “It is about public perception,” and added that it was “wholly reasonable” for Ryedale council to take on board the concerns raised in the Neighbourhood Plan drawn up for Malton and Norton.

Coun Paul Andrews said a decision on the Wentworth Street site should be deferred until the outcome of Ryedale District Council’s Local Development Framework – the long-term planning blueprint – was known and that the town council should support the list of objections drawn up by Ms Jukes.

Coun David Lloyd-Williams said that to demolish the concrete-built rifle club would be premature.

The relocation of the cattle market was a material consideration, he said, and as such, the Wentworth Street site should not be decided now, but at a later date. He added that there was also a potential site for a supermarket development, understood to be in the Showfield Lane area.

Malton mayor Coun Jason Fitzgerald-Smith agreed that the decision should be made by Mr Pickles’s department in Whitehall.