The businessman behind a potential £100 million development warned the major investment could be lost to Perthshire.
Stephen Leckie, chief executive of Crieff Hydro Ltd, was speaking after the latest setback to his vision to build 200 holiday lodges, a 100-bed care home and assisted living accommodation for another 100 people, as well as leisure facilities on land near Gilmerton.
He believes the project would create scores of jobs and inject around £25 million into the Scottish economy each year.
The Crieff East plan was rejected by Perth and Kinross Council earlier this year when officials told Mr Leckie that crucial information on air quality had not been submitted to planners on time, though the developers claimed the report had already been sent to the council’s environmental health department.
At a meeting of the council’s local review board Mr Leckie suffered another blow when he challenged the ruling.
Board convener Councillor Murray Lyall said that the application had been dealt with in a “piecemeal” fashion but he was of the opinion that they should uphold the initial refusal on the grounds of lack of information, which was endorsed by the board members.
He did leave the door open to Mr Leckie and his team telling them there was still the chance to reapply which would then be determined by the full council.
“This would give an opportunity for all the information to be dealt with at the one time,” he said.
Following the meeting on Tuesday at the Dewars Centre, Mr Leckie said he would have to consider the cost of reapplying as significant costs had already been incurred.
He described the process as “frustrating” is it had been more than three years since the plans were formulated and they had wished to to gauge the council’s stance on such a development before moving on to detailed planning.
“If it becomes so difficult we could go elsewhere,” he said.
“We have got to figure out the commerciality of it.”
