A BID to block development on the former Gascoigne Wood Mine site launched by the Samuel Smith brewery has been thrown out by the court of appeal.

Sam Smith’s – which styled itself as a champion of the environment in the Selby area – has again failed in a legal bid to block plans to save and convert buildings on the former colliery, which it claimed would be a blot on the landscape and should be demolished.

The brewery had hoped to persuade the Court of Appeal to quash the grant of planning permission issued by the Government to allow UK Coal Mining Ltd to keep four buildings and bring the site back into use for manufacturing or industrial distribution via a link to the railways.

However, the Appeal Court has now backed a High Court ruling last June that the grant of planning permission, issued by the country’s planning supremo, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Hazel Blears, should stand.

Samuel Smith, which the judge said is a “local landowner and employer with a longstanding interest in the correct application of planning policy in the Selby district” and which runs a pub in nearby Sherburn, had argued that conversion of the buildings was not financially viable and would conflict with policy in the local development plan against creating new employment land in the countryside. In his High Court ruling last year, Mr Justice Cranston said: “In straightforward terms, this application raises what must be a not unfamiliar problem. A relatively large industrial site becomes defunct. The claimant, for one, wants it demolished now: it is a blot on the landscape and in breach of planning control.

“Its owners have proposed an alternative and what they say is an attractive use. The claimant says this alternative use is a delusion: given the cost of conversion and the potential demand it is not economically viable.

“The local planning authority, a planning inspector and ultimately the Secretary of State think there is something in it and that, at least for the time being, it should remain and the alternative use be attempted. In plain terms, the Secretary of State has been persuaded that Gascoigne Wood is a niche site, a rail-linked site with the potential to support manufacturing, distribution or both.

“That, in the balance with other material considerations, has led to her decision not to apply the development plan. There is no basis to quash her decision.”

Backing that decision at the Appeal Court, the Master of the Rolls Sir Anthony Clarke, Lord Justice Toulson and Lord Justice Sullivan ruled that the key question was whether there was a “real prospect” the buildings could be used.

They found that, in order for a prospect to be real, it did not have to be probable or likely, but a possibility would suffice.