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The Government’s advisory body on heritage has raised serious concerns about a plan to build a £10million rum distillery biome heated by geothermal energy saying it will damage the Cornwall and West Devon World Heritage Site.

Historic England said it has “strong concerns” about the ambitious plan to create a rum cask maturation biome, with a visitor centre and bar, at United Downs in Cornwall’s historic mining area.

In a letter submitted to planners at Cornwall Council the organisation said it believes would damage the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site (CMWHS) “given the change to the appearance and character of the site, and the physical impacts that would be made”.

It wants developers to look for an alternative site – including one just across the road.

The letter said: “In our opinion, the harm generated is not clearly and convincingly justified given the likelihood that alternative locations for the facility are available that would create a lesser degree of (or no) harm.”

Historic England wants other sites to be explored as a potential location for the development and said that while United Downs appears to be “a barren and rather nelgected landscape” its value is associated with the long history and dramatic decline of mining in the area.

It said open areas of spoil heaps, and structures such as engine houses, whilst not “aesthetically pretty”, are historically important.

The CMWHS was created in 2006 covering 10 areas featuring a distinctive patterns of buildings, monuments and sites which together form the “coherent series of distinctive cultural landscapes created by the industrialisation of hard rock mining” between 1700 and 1914.