Housebuilders who won a battle to put homes on a former school site have had their bid to make Midlothian Council pay their expenses rejected - even though the local authority was ruled to have been "unreasonable".
Lochay Homes took its battle to build 46 bungalows at the site of Wellington School, near the village of Howgate, to Scottish Ministers last December after the council’s planning committee delayed a decision on the proposals.
The plans had sparked a wave of protest from local residents who established the Wellington Action Group to fight it. They warned that the building of the homes on the rural site would create an "isolated commuter desert".
