THE public inquiry into the £3 billion coal-fired power station proposed for Hunterston in Ayrshire has been called into question after a new Scottish Government report rejected the need for additional plants anywhere in the country.

The government's new planning monitoring report, which gives its latest views on planning policy, appears to be at odds with its own national planning framework.

While the 2009 framework lists the new Hunterston power station as one of 14 national planning priorities, the new report says it, "sees no energy need to increase the number of thermal power plants".

The station's detractors believe this makes pointless the public inquiry, which was triggered by the conflict between the national planning framework and North Ayrshire Council's objection. It is tipped to cost upwards of a million pounds.

Alan Hill, an SNP councillor at North Ayrshire Council who is against the power station, said the statement in the monitoring report was "welcome news". He said: "It would be good to save taxpayers the expense of an inquiry. Given the 20,000 objectors, the public inquiry is going to be a huge logistical exercise.

"In theory they all have the right to speak to the reporter. You could imagine the costs escalating sharply. I would be surprised if it did not end up costing seven figures."

But a legal source that wanted to be anonymous said that it would be difficult for politicians to stop the inquiry at this stage. Instead, the monitoring report could leave the government open to a challenge from either side that the inquiry has been prejudiced. This could raise the cost to the public purse even further.

Published without much fanfare several weeks ago, the government's new report says the country needs a minimum of 2.5GW of capacity from fossil-fuel-burning stations for the future. At present Scotland has around 4.8GW from the stations at Longannet in Fife, Cockenzie in East Lothian and Peterhead.

The 1.2GW Cockenzie plant is due to close next year but owner Scottish Power already has planning permission to build a gas-fired replacement. Longannet may stay open well into the 2020s while Peterhead has no close date.

Assuming Scottish Power goes ahead with the new Cockenzie, the new report therefore seems to indicate the government believe the plant proposed by Ayrshire Power at Hunterston is unnecessary. It was produced by the same department that will be responsible for the public inquiry, albeit that there are Chinese walls separating the people involved.

This latest revelation will be a new concern for Ayrshire Power owner Peel Energy, the company behind the proposal. As well as facing the public enquiry, Peel has already lost Danish partner Dong Energy and is having to fight an appeal in a case for judicial review brought by local birdwatcher Marco McGinty.

Ayrshire Power project manager Mike Claydon told the Sunday Herald that his company preferred to rely on the government's draft energy generation policy statement, which was published late last year and did not include the same statement about additional stations. He said: "The monitoring report is a much broader document of which energy is only a small part. I suspect that the wording wasn't checked for its consistency."

He said Scotland needed a power station that was committed to retrofitting with carbon capture technology as soon as possible, which was not the case with the new Cockenzie plant, which Scottish Power might decide not to build in any case. He also pointed out that Longannet could close earlier than expected, possibly before 2020.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the report contradicted the intentions set down in the national planning framework. She said: "The application for a new power station at Hunterston will be called to public inquiry under the Electricity Act 1989, as a relevant planning authority has objected to an application and the objection has not been withdrawn."