A BREWERY’S seven-year legal and planning battle over a North Yorkshire quarry has ended in failure at the Supreme Court.

Samuel Smith Old Brewery Ltd has failed to stop Darrington Quarries Ltd mining 26 more hectares at Jackdaw Crag limestone quarry to the south-west of Tadcaster.

Twice the Tadcaster brewery, which owns a farm nearby and draws water from an aquifer under the land, persuaded courts to overturn planning permission granted by North Yorkshire County Council to the mining company.

But now the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, has agreed with the county council and declared that the planning permission should stay in place.

Darrington Quarries which has operated the quarry for many years, hopes to mine two million tonnes of rock from the extension land in seven years.

The challenge centred around the planning officer’s report to the council committee which granted planning permission in 2016.

Samuel Smith Old Brewery's lawyers claimed the report, which had more than 100 pages, didn’t properly deal with the effect of the mining on the Green Belt.

But in an unanimous judgement by five Supreme Court judges, Lord Carnwath called the report an “impressively comprehensive and detailed document” and said that it had dealt with the Green Belt issue appropriately.

The quarry first got planning permission in July 1948 and has regularly had its permission renewed or extended.

But when the mining company got the 26-hectare extension in 2013, the brewery successfully challenged the council's decision in the High Court and the permission was quashed.

The company applied again for the extension and in 2016 was again granted permission.

Again the brewery took the council to the High Court to try and get the permission revoked through a judicial review, but this time it lost and the council’s decision stood.

The brewery appealed the High Court decision to the Court of Appeal, which agreed with the brewery that the permission should be quashed. The council appealed the Court of Appeal’s decision to the Supreme Court, which decided the council had acted correctly.