A campaign group says the community has been left “shell shocked” and “outraged” plans to build a £60-million luxury holiday resort outside of Newquay have been approved.

Cornwall Council’s strategic planning committee gave the go ahead to build the 400 lodge Green Ridge Resort on 70 acres of agricultural land off the A392 at Colan, Quintrell Downs as it felt the economic benefits would outweigh the negatives.

The committee was told the scheme submitted by Abe Simpson, of Kingsley Leisure developers, would create 200 full-time and part-time jobs and generate £26-million a year for the local economy.

But Residents Against Green Ridge Development have accused councillors of not scrutinising the projected economic benefits and job gains enough during the meeting.

More than 350 people, along with Colan Parish Council, Newquay MP Noah Law and Colan Cornwall councillor John Fitter had objected to the scheme as they believed it would cause an unacceptable level of harm to the landscape, ecology and historical setting of the area.

Residents spoke against the development at the planning committee meeting, arguing the scheme would lead to the loss of versatile agricultural land and exacerbate congestion in the area.

The Green Ridge resort will include a reception area, a swimming pool, spa and indoor activity centre, food and beverage outlets, outdoor activities including a water park, splash park, playground, dog walking trail, walking trails and seasonal outdoor events areas and a series of permanent lakes.

There will also be an on-site solar farm and associated battery storage facility generating enough energy for all the accommodation units.

A spokesperson for Residents Against Green Ridge Development said: “The local community is shell shocked and outraged by this decision.

“We always believed that this application was audacious in the extreme given its location and sheer scale, and yet Cornwall Council have waved it through.

“But the fact that they did so without any meaningful scrutiny of the developers’ outlandish claims of economic gains and job creation was quite astonishing.

“We sat in the gallery waiting for the searching questions on these two key issues, but they did not arrive.

“Not one councillor saw fit to request a full breakdown of exactly what type of jobs the development was going to create.

“Surely this was a fundamental question given that job creation was being weighted so highly to claim this land. The reality is that no aspirational, well-paid jobs will be created. “The site will predominantly require cleaners for 400 lodges and then it will be all the usual low skilled tourist industry positions which local businesses are already finding it so difficult to fill. This will only exasperate staffing issues for many established local businesses.

“Likewise, the wildly optimistic claims of economic growth went totally unchallenged by the councillors who could have had a field day had they had the inclination to drill down on the claims. The wider detrimental impact on similar local businesses was simply not discussed.

“The traffic at Quintrell Downs is already at breaking point. With a capacity of up to 2,400 people on site the inevitable increased traffic flow will evidently be mitigated by a single 16 Seat Minibus and a few electric bikes. You really could not make it up.

“Let’s be perfectly clear, by surrendering this agricultural land to Kingsley Developments, Cornwall Council have placed a pitifully low value on 180 acres of our beautiful Cornish countryside.

“What’s more, a very dangerous precedent has now been set by this committee because clearly no land is safe. There is a growing feeling amongst the local community that something is very wrong here and that we should not be surprised if the Kingsley Developments return at a later date to seek a “change of use” to further increase their profits. Let’s wait and see.

“Hopefully the five councillors who voted this through will be held accountable for this decision at the ballot box at the next election. They cannot be allowed to continue to squander our beautiful Cornish countryside to these developers in this way.”

Councillors approved the outline planning application by five votes for and four against.

Cllr Fitter said: “I am very disappointed with the decision of the members of the Strategic Planning who voted by a majority of one vote to approve the outline planning permission.

“Not only have they ignored over 300 hundred written submissions based upon sound planning reasons as to why the application should be refused some of which were highlighted in the officer’s report.

“But what I do find difficult to understand is the logic that was used, shared I suspect with other members of the community who were at the meeting.

“Is that four of the members of the five who voted to approve had only just, on the previous application that was debated had taken into consideration landscape, cumulative impact, grade of value farmland and the rural nature of the site placing this value above the importance of the solar energy application and so had voted to refuse that application.

“However, it would seem that when it comes to a 400 so called holiday homes luxury lodge site also situated in the countryside, also on precious good grade farmland, with the same landscape issues, plus important ecology concerns and massive highway concerns, the unwanted need for this development trumps the common sense of refusal. What preserve logic is that.”

Abe Simpson from Kingsley Leisure stated the company will take action against anyone who posts “libellous” comments online following the decision.

Mr Simpson said: “For various reasons, I am going to decline to comment specifically on the Green Ridge Resort for the moment.

“Unfortunately, people who object to it have had much to say online, and several of the comments posted are entirely baseless/libellous.

“Our legal team have been instructed to engage with the authors of those posts/comments and, where appropriate, we will be issuing claims for appropriate relief in the High Court. Ultimately, people must think much more carefully before committing libellous comments to social networking sites – especially where those comments are clearly malicious and are capable of causing serious harm.

“Incidentally, you may have also noticed that social media pages for businesses we own were hacked over the weekend, where posts were made claiming to be from me. They were not.

“We have engaged forensic technical experts to evidence who was responsible for this action and, again, will be looking to exercise the full extent of any legal redress against those individuals.”