What should I do about bad pre-planning app advice?

[Ilovexmastime]

I wonder if anyone can help me? My DH and I have paid our local council a fee for pre-planning advice on a development of two houses we would like to build on our land. At the meeting DH and our agent had with the planning officer, they discussed what we would like to build (two dormer bungalows with subterranean garages) and showed the officer sketches of the buildings. She said that she thought that they would be suitable for approval.
However, our application has been turned down on the basis of the proposed dwellings being 3 storey and we have been told that a 3 storey building would never get permission in this area.
Could anyone who knows about these things explain to me how our plans can be considered 3 storey please? I'm confused as the new houses would only be 1.2m higher than the exsisting bungalow.
Is it worth appealing do you think?
Also, have we been sold bad advice, and if so is there any where we can go to complain?

[Elansofar]

Yes this sounds really confused. Theres two issues, the bad advice and the reason for refusal -what to do next. Consider making a freedom of information request for all correspondence, emails and reports in connection with the application site for 2013. See what you can dig up and why this has happened. The Council will have a complaints procedure and do not hesitate to engage with your Local Councillor or the Chair of the Planning Committee if you are not getting anywhere in terms of the poor advice you received. Yes you can appeal but make sure you are going to get what you want. It annoys me that planners make it so hard to get planning consent but in this instance it might be worth you engaging professional advice for peace of mind that you will win the appeal.

[NaiceAm]

We had our pp turned down on spurious grounds and in spite of having discussed it with the council before submission (although we did not have to pay for the privilege(!)).

I took a week off work and studied all the planning rules for our area and wrote an appeal which we submitted online to the Bristol Inspectorate. We were successful. The appeal needs to be written in the same lingo as the planning rules use and by reference to them. All the planning rules should be available via your council's website. There are also some rules such as the British standards on trees which you need to either pay for or for free look up at the library.

We did consider putting in an amended application at the same time but decided to wait and see if our appeal was successful.

I would definitely recommend approaching the appeal dispassionately - apply the rules to your situation and don't major on the council's comments in the pre-application stage.

[Ilovexmastime]

Thanks for the advice both of you. I hadn't thought about making a freedom of information request - good idea as I'm sure there is something fishy going on (the original planning officer, who gave the advice, was taken off our case and replaced with someone else... only they didn't tell us this we found out later on).

Oh NaiceAm, I was thinking that was what I was going to have to do. Just what I don't need at the moment as I am self-employed and Xmas is just round the corner... ie I'm busy enough as it is!

I still can't get over that we had to pay for this advice either!