A BITTER battle between a Yorkshire farming family and a firm of property developers will have to go to a fully fought trial at London’s High Court.

One of the country’s top judges refused to nip the action in the bud by giving summary judgment in the case to the defendants – a decision without the need for a fully contested hearing.

Mr Justice Newey at the High Court in London yesterday refused York-based Skelwith Leisure Ltd’s application for summary judgment in a case brought by them against landowning and farming family the Armstrongs.

Skelwith and the Armstrongs are at loggerheads over a golf course built by the Armstrongs on land owned by them near Knaresborough in 2004.

The dispute stems from the Armstrongs' decision in April 2008 to sell the golf course to Skelwith for £7 million. Skelwith planned to turn it into a golf resort, according to court papers.

But Skelwith then found itself unable to pay the full sum. The parties reached an agreement under which Skelwith would run the course, paying the Armstrongs £2.1 million and a further £3.5 million in instalments over a number of years.

The Armstrongs have been seeking full repayment for the land ever since.

As a result the family, advised by a Harrogate solicitor, created an offshore company called Polar to which they transferred both the debt owed to them by Skelwith and the charge on the property into another company which they then intended to sell to local landowners the Ward family for £3.7 million.

Skelwith, however, fought back and in February won a temporary court order blocking the sale between the Armstrongs and the Wards.

Skelwith claim that they had plans to build a housing development on the golf course that would raise the value of the land to tens of millions of pounds.

They say that the Armstrongs’ plans to sell on the golf course significantly undervalues it and should be blocked. However, the Armstrongs want to be able to sell on the site.