Campaigners were today celebrating victory in their five-year-long battle to stop a quarry being turned into a waste tip.

A High Court judge has upheld their opposition to 2.5 million tonnes of rubbish being dumped into Buck Park quarry at Denholme.

The victory also marks a personal triumph for Ann Anderson, who has been spearheading the fight along with the town's action group.

At the High Court in London yesterday, Mr Justice Crane backed her case that the dumping would have an adverse impact on trees and shrubs.

He said that details put in by P. Casey (Enviro), the company behind the project, relating to the existing trees, hedgerows and shrubs were "either non-existent or wholly inadequate".

The legal team of Mrs Anderson, of Caperley Crescent, Denholme, also successfully persuaded him to quash the Council's decision to allow the extraction of one million cubic metres of stone.

Her lawyer, Paul Brown, claimed the entire planning consent was now "dead", saying it was now too late for P. Casey (Enviro) Ltd to submit fresh landscaping details to the council.

The only option for the company, which only acquired the site in April and had already spent vast sums on the project, would be to start again with a whole new planning application, which could take years, said Mr Brown.

The court heard that the deadline for submitting detailed plans to the Council expired on March 26 this year.

Planning permission for quarrying was first granted in 1992, to end in 2002, but an extension until 2006 was granted by the Government in 2001, as well as conditional permission to dispose of 2.5 million tonnes of waste.

Mrs Anderson, a Denholme Town Councillor, claimed that the waste would be too close to Denholme's 3,000 residents, with the closest house, at Buck Park Farm, as little as 15 metres away. She argued that the details approved by the Council were insufficient to meet the conditions set by the Government for the scheme to go ahead.

And that the planning inspector who considered the case ahead of the 2001 decision had recognised the need to prevent adverse visual impact of the works on what is a Special Landscape Area.

Mr Justice Crane said that campaigners against the scheme had been described as being "like Rottweilers". He said: "No doubt that was not a completely complimentary way in which to describe the objectors, although they might regard it as a back-handed compliment".

He also refused the Council's application to appeal the case to the Court of Appeal.

After the hearing Tim Ayres, of the Council's legal services said: "We will consider the details of the judge's decision before deciding whether or not to take the case further."

No-one at P. Casey (Enviro) Ltd was available to comment.

e-mail: clive.white@bradford.newsquest.co.uk

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