..new application to be made with a few changes to allow all to save face..
Save face with whom, gypsy, themselves? Perhaps. With the rest of the world? Unlikely I suspect. The image left is one of purse-lipped apparatchiks strenuously enforcing the regulations/law/policy/whatever, no matter what. When it results in the spontaneous outrage of the "Great British People" they'd got it wrong from the start. No face saving is possible, I'm afraid. They'll just have to fall back on the age old cliches, such as; "I was merely carrying out orders, that's my job!" As PPRuNe Pop has already pointed out, so did the Nimbys of Ashtead and their councillors. Think they saved face?