appealing a condition

hi all,
this is my first time posting here so hopefully someone can advise me about this.
heres the situation
i have applied for pp for to do a lot of work to my house which is situated on a 3/4 acre site on a back road in the country. althought the setting is rural, it is officially designated a residendial area acc to the local dev plan and there are houses on both sides and fields front and back.

the items applied for originally were

a large garage at the back of the site
a very large sunroom on one side of the house,
a standalone 9m x 4m office building on the other side of the house in line with the front of the house.
this could not be attached as the bathroom window would have been blocked if the office was attached to the house.

on the day we were due a decision, i got a letter requesting further information about a couple of things. but in particular querying the size of the garage and stating that the planner felt the sunroom was too big and wanted us to submit a more appropriate design. i spoke to the planner who explained her position and duly submitted revised plans and answers to the other questions.

when i spoke to her, i can not remember if we discussed the office.
it was never mentioned in the f.i. letter and was the one part of the app i assumed would cause the least problems.

i have now received pp but one of the conditions is that i must resubmit site plans omitting the office completely. all the other items have been passed without issue.

rang the planning dept to query this and spoke to a new planner. the original one who sent the fi letter was gone.
he was very nice but said that as there were no notes he did not know the original planners view on it at the time the fi letter was requested.
he stated that in its proposed location he and his boss thought the office would have given the house the appearance of too much frontage and that they were suspicious about the intended use because of the proposed internal layout.
i am a self employed programmer with no employees and work at home over the net a lot so do have a valid reason for wanting an office to work in away from the kids. the office would not be used for anything else or generqate extra traffic and this can be proven.

he told me that if i reapplied with an open plan layout and set it back behind the house there should not be any problem with granting approval.

i have a couple of problems with this.

if adjusting the internals and moving it back is all that is necessary, why was this not pointed out in the fi letter. they outlined issues with the sunroom and i was happy to submit an alternative plan.

as this was not classed as a domestic extension, i had to pay a couple of hundred euros to apply for it in the first place. why should i have to pay this again + agent fees + suffer the delays involved.

i think that with staff changing and volume of work, this was not properly processed by the council and so the easiest thing was to refuse it.
i think i would like to appeal the decision to abp but according to their website, appeals are only considered on planning grounds. does that apply here or do i have any other otions/routes available. also if i appeal, do i run a risk of losing the other items.
any advice would be greatly appreciated
planman