In 2008 Trump was given outline planning consent for a very different development involving 500 houses, 950 holiday apartments and a 450-bedroom hotel. The consent imposed 46 conditions, including the order in which the projects were to be built, and provisions for affordable housing, schools and transport.

The Trump Organisation, however, has dismissed the charges, and launched a fierce personal counter-attack, dismissing them as "relics". Last month Trump announced in the US that he was setting up an “exploratory committee” to weigh whether he should run as a republican presidential candidate in 2016, describing himself as “the only one who can make America truly great again”.

Critics say that his applications are designed to avoid a series of conditions imposed by the Scottish Government in 2008 when he was first controversially given the go-ahead for his golf resort at Menie near Balmedie on the northeast coast.

The billionaire property tycoon and would-be US presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has been accused of seeking to subvert the planning process in Aberdeenshire with a rash of new applications for houses, holiday lets and a second golf course.

The conditions were seen as a way of ensuring that the development would bring economic benefit to the region, in return for allowing Trump’s first golf course to destroy part of a unique natural system of sand dunes, under legal protection as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). But because he is now submitting new applications, it remains to be seen if and how many of the previous conditions will be applied.

“It looks like he is trying to avoid the controls imposed in the outline permission, and do more of what he wants rather than what the government wanted,” said Debra Storr, a planning consultant who was the local Green councillor for ten years until 2012.

“This is unacceptable. Trump boasts he gets to do things other developers can't, but he shouldn't be allowed to get away with them.”

Trump was now planning 350 more private houses and 950 more holiday lets than previously and no big hotel, she pointed out. “Aberdeenshire Council must revisit every aspect to make sure that he cannot avoid the contributions developers are normally required make to public infrastructure such as schools and affordable housing.”

According to Aberdeenshire Green councillor Martin Ford, a veteran opponent of Trump’s plans, nothing had been built under the original 2008 consent. “The conditions on the outline consent, for example stipulating the order different elements were to be built, are therefore by-passed,” he said.

"So conditions imposed to prevent Mr Trump simply destroying the SSSI and cherry-picking the most profitable elements of his package are not going to apply, because Mr Trump is not implementing the permission to which these conditions are attached.”

Jonathan Hughes, chief executive of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said: “If the claims made by Martin Ford are true then the trust would have serious concerns that the planning conditions designed to help mitigate the huge environmental damage of the Menie golf development are being unfairly sidestepped by Mr Trump.”

The response from the Trump Organisation in New York was to attack its critics. The organisation’s executive vice president and counsel, George Sorial, described Ford and Storr as “relics from an embarrassing chapter of Aberdeenshire Council’s history”.

Their views had been “totally discredited” by Trump’s many achievements at Menie, he argued. “The quality of what we have built along with the numerous awards, global recognition, continuous flow of accolades from the community and beyond speak for themselves,” he said.

“With the price of oil around $40 a barrel, their allegations are not only inaccurate but are shockingly reckless because they discourage further investment in Aberdeen, Sorial told the Sunday Herald.

“It is very common for developers with large projects like ours to submit multiple applications for the same parcel of land and every planning authority in Scotland routinely handles this type of scenario. Mr. Ford and Ms. Storr should both just move on with their lives and try to find some way to make a positive contribution to their community instead of seeking personal notoriety by criticising our achievements.”