A legal challenge to block controversial plans for a strategic rail freight interchange on the former Radlett Aerodrome has failed.

St Albans District Council asked one of the country’s top judges at London’s High Court to quash a Government decision to finally grant planning permission for the interchange at the former aerodrome on North Orbital Road, Upper Colne Valle.

The scheme has been bitterly opposed by local campaigners since 2006.

The council first rejected the planning application put forward by Helioslough in 2006. That decision was upheld by the Government on appeal, and exactly the same result followed when Helioslough submitted a second, identical, application in 2009.

However, on that occasion, Helioslough took its case to the High Court and secured a 2011 ruling that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government must reconsider the matter.

As a result, the matter was looked at again by a Government planning inspector. The Secretary of State then, despite opposition from the council and local campaign group STRiFE, granted planning permission in July last year.

The council then brought the matter to London’s High Court for a second time, arguing that last year’s planning permission should be quashed.

It claimed that the Secretary of State had erred in law and “fettered his discretion” in setting out a test for departing from the earlier decision.

It also claimed that he had failed to take into account a decision a week earlier, in July last year, in which he refused an application by Veolia ES (UK) Ltd for planning permission for a waste management facility on a site at New Barnfield, only four miles away from the Helioslough site.

However, dismissing both arguments, Mr Justice Holgate said that he was “left in no doubt” that the inspector and the Secretary of State did not misdirect themselves as to the correct approach to follow.

He ordered the council to pay the Government’s legal costs of £13,269 and refused it permission to appeal though it still remains open to the council to ask the Court of Appeal directly for the go-ahead to challenge today’s ruling.

For a timeline of events, click here.