Plans for a £200m tourist village on the south coast of Cornwall have been called in for public inquiry by the ODPM.

The scheme is intended for a 1.2 km stretch of beach at Carlyon Bay, two miles south of St Austell. It consists of 511 apartments, 15,000 m2 of leisure and retail units and more than 700 car parking spaces.

It is supported by Restormel council, which says it will create up to 600 jobs in the area. However, Cornwall council opposes it on the grounds that it will generate too much traffic, and local campaign group Carlyon Bay Watch has labelled it “an environmental outrage”.

Plans have also been hampered by the need for revisions to the sea wall to comply with upgraded regulations for sea defences.

The developer is a company called Ampersand. It has responded to the environmental objections by claiming that the site is brownfield land created by spoil from a clay pit.

The bay has long been earmarked for development. A scheme designed by Evans & Shalev won planning permission in 1991. This had the same number of apartments, but the leisure and retail components were to be supplied by the conversion of facilities dating back to the 1950s.

The current scheme was designed by architect ORMS with Buro Happold as structural engineer and Mace as construction manager.

Dale Jennings, director of ORMS, said: “All we have done is shuffle the pieces around to make a better scheme.”

Ampersand has just submitted another application to include the revised sea wall.

Tim Renwick, Ampersand’s construction director, said: “We would probably withdraw the application and wait until the sea wall application wins approval. Then we will have the option of going back to our original scheme or doing something else behind a new sea wall.”