Campaigners have received a knockout blow in a fight to stop a McDonald’s drive-thru, 18-pump petrol station and a M&S Simply Food store being built on the site of the former Tollgate Hotel.

The battle between developer BP Oil UK Limited, Gravesham council and Tollgate Services’ owner Simon Privett – whose petrol station is within a few hundred yards of the proposed one – has been going on for two years.

The development plans for the site just off the A2, at the Gravesend Central turn-off, were opposed by more than 1,700 people, who vented their anger with protests, petitions and letters.

However, it looks like work that would see a second Mcdonald’s built in Gravesend will finally go ahead.

The council’s planning board is expected to follow officers’ recommendations to approve the project, subject to conditions, at a meeting tonight (Wednesday).

The plans were first approved in January last year, but a High Court judge quashed the decision after Mr Privett lodged judicial review proceedings.

He was awarded £20,000 to cover his costs in an out-of-court settlement with the council, which admitted it had not properly taken into account paragraph 89 of the National Planning Policy Framework, essentially what was acceptable in the Green Belt.

A Gravesham council said: “Although the claim was accepted to be heard at the High Court, the council contested the claim but, after legal advice, the matter was settled out of court, on only one of the eight grounds claimed.”

Developers still wanted the scheme to go ahead, and this week the proposal went back before the council.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Privett said: “Obviously we’re extremely unhappy about it. We’ve been through the mill anyway with the A2 road changing.

“We lost 45% of our business with that and now we’ve come back and made a successful business.

“We employ 25 people or more and we’ve been planning to expand and this is just not fair. We service the need for the A2 and the new development is just greed.”

Mr Privett’s garage was selling BP fuel up until April and he said the firm wanted him to continue.

He said: “They didn’t want us to go, they wanted us to stay BP, but I said to them ‘there is no way you’re going to have BP signs offering different prices next to each other’.

“They’ll offer high prices and then we’ll undercut them; it will be confusing for customers.

“If the development goes ahead basically it means I’ll have to start from scratch and that’s pretty hard to do.”

The scheme will create 65 jobs, with 15 staff at work during one shift.

The petrol station, complete with cash machine, and McDonald’s will be open 24 hours.

Deliveries to the station will be once a week and the restaurant three times a week.

The Tollgate Hotel was bought by the Highways Agency under a compulsory purchase order in November 2006 for £4.85 million when the A2 was widened.

Once that was finished, for several years it was offered for sale and marketed as a site suitable for continued hotel use.

Speaking at a planning meeting in January last year, Cllr Lee Croxton said: “I think all of us would like to see a hotel, but unfortunately we have to determine what’s in front of us now, according to planning law.

“If I could find a lawful reason, I would turn it down. I think it’s going to be chaos.”

Many living near the proposed site were upset by the plans and the council received 598 objection letters from individuals and two circular letters, one signed by 511 people and the other signed by 44 people.

The long list of the concerns included anti-social behaviour, an increase in noise and litter, an increase in traffic - causing danger to pedestrians and particularly children and the impact on the Green Belt land.

Access to the development would be from the existing option of the roundabout off the north of the realigned A2 trunk road.

The site is in the borough’s Green Belt but BP has promised it would be building on previously developed land and not encroach into new areas.

Campaign to Protect Rural Englandc (CPRE) said: “The site is in Green Belt but it is a previously developed site and is currently an eyesore so CPRE do not oppose its redevelopment in principle.

"Ideally CPRE would have liked it to be put to a use that would be more beneficial to the community.”