A MAJOR industrial site will be included in the boundary of the New Forest National Park after the government defied expert advice.

Fawley Power Station will form part of Britain's newest national park, which will officially come into being tomorrow.

Rural affairs minister Alun Michael has always wanted to include the power station to seal a "hole" in the 571sq km scheme.

His desire to incorporate the plant, with its 200m chimney, into a scheme designed to protect a national treasure sparked a second public inquiry at the end of last year.

The planning inspector who chaired the inquiry recommended that the power station should be left out of the proposed boundary, but Mr Michael has ignored the finding.

A government report issued on Mr Michael's behalf said: "The minister does not see any of the grounds relied on by the inspector as being sufficiently strong to alter the minister's initial decision that the power station should be included as forming an integral part of the extensive tract of land which, as a whole, does meet both the landscape and recreation criteria and so is rightly designated as a national park."

However, the ruling does not mean that there will be public access to the power plant site.

Planning inspector Robert Parry recommended that land to the north of the 175-acre complex at Fawley should be included, but not the power station itself.

His reasons included that neither the previous inspector nor the Countryside Agency had recommended its inclusion, its close proximity to the boundary, potential operational difficulties for the power station, precedents set by other national parks and there being no plans to decommission the power station in the foreseeable future.

Chairman of Fawley Parish Council Allan Glass welcomed the government decision and urged people to think of the long-term future of the site.

"It's very good news because when the power station does disappear that site will be able to revert to normal coastal land. That side of the Waterside has been rather over developed with industry for some years."

However, New Forest East MP Julian Lewis believes that the inspector's advice should have been upheld and compared it to the recent public inquiry into Dibden Bay.

"On Dibden Bay we had a sensible inspector's report which was accepted by the government - now we have another sensible report but the government thinks it knows better," he said.

"It is an odd situation where an industrial site, however impressive, comes into a national park whereas sensitive areas north of Totton and also at Dibden Bay are both excluded."

The New Forest National Park will be the country's smallest but one of the biggest in terms of population with 34,000 inhabitants.

Anyone wishing to challenge the validity of the designation order has six weeks to apply to the High Court from March 14