AMID chaotic scenes reminiscent of a TV court-room drama, the Public Inquiry into the proposed Tesco supermarket in Coleford was abruptly halted on Thursday.

Legal arguments caused the planned two-day hearing to be postponed after just 40 minutes.

The problem that caused the adjournment by Her Majesty's Planning Inspector, Mr David Leeming, began some days before the meeting was convened. Many opponents of the scheme who had all written or emailed letters of objection had not received back the legally required notification that the Inquiry was to take place.

As well as being a legal requirement, notification of an inquiry is part of the FODDC's appeals protocol.

A frantic round of emails were then sent out by the Hands Off Our Towns (HOOT) group, and almost as soon as the meeting started, the Inspector's attention was drawn to the fact that there were a number of people – including four in the council chamber – who had not received the notification.

In an impassioned speech a member of the HOOT group called for the meeting to be adjourned, highlighting the problems over notification, and also adding that the Council had failed in their duty under the Human Rights Act to correctly proceed with engaging the public on their involvement with the application for the supermarket.

This was followed by an official statement from the Inspector in which he said he "would not adjourn the Inquiry as it is not in the best interests of all parties".

The spokeswoman for HOOT abruptly walked out of the hearing – leaving in her wake two startled-looking barristers who were there to represent the Council and Tesco.

Their deliberations over the legal angles that her statement had brought up then led them to ask the Inspector for a brief adjournment while they continued discussions in private.

They returned to the chamber 15 minutes later to ask the Inspector to reconsider his decision and in the light of the fact that the spokeswoman's absence from the meeting created several legal problems in procedure, they asked that the entire hearing be stopped immediately.

To gasps from both the lawyers and the public, the Inspector agreed and the hearing was adjourned.

A spokesman for HOOT told the Review: "We have to insist that the council take this opportunity to start the entire planning process again, so that people are properly notified and given the opportunity to exercise their democratic rights – rights that this council seem all too keen to either take away from us or obscure them so that we cannot realise what our rights actually are."

He added: "The Inspector was asked by the barristers at the closure of the Inquiry who was responsible for the costs of adjourning the hearing. It would appear that the failings of the council were directly responsible for the adjournment, and we have to wonder what sort of sum of local taxpayers' money is going to have to be used to sort out this mess."

At the time the Review went to press no statement had been issued by the Planning Inspectorate or the FODDC. No date has yet been set for reconvening the Inquiry.