The questions and issues they raised were on the whole, ridiculous.
It doesn't matter whether or not they were ridiculous. What matters is whether or not they were valid reasons for refusal under planning law - if they weren't, the appeal will succeed.
A really bizarre feature of the planning system, by the way, is that if you build something illegally and then apply for retrospective permission then the fact that you're trying to take the **** out of the system is not, by law, held against you. Your application has to be considered on its merits, regardless of the fact that you've decided to stick two fingers up to the law and the local community and build illegally.
[All my comments in this thread are by way of providing background information on the way the planning system works, as this is widely misunderstood; I am not making any comment on this particular site as I know nothing about it.]