The long-running dispute over the future of the Radlett Aerodrome site is set to continue after campaigners confirmed they have lodged an appeal against last month's High Court ruling.

St Albans: Fight the Freight has been battling against the controversial decision to sell the 1,000-acre site to real estate company Segro.

It intends to build a freight terminal on the land, which opponents say will bring thousands of extra lorries and vans onto already congested roads.

An appeal made under the Metropolitan Green Belt Act of 1938 was rejected by a judge, who ruled that the sale was lawful.

However, the group had argued that the sale was unlawful, as the land was purchased by Hertfordshire County Council for £1 in the 1980s under the condition that it would be  "preserved as permanent open space and could not be sold for development".

Campaigners say that the judge largely based her decision on information that came at a late stage from a farmer who claimed to have a tenancy agreement that proved the land was not open space.

They say that they had no time to challenge this evidence and that with more time, they could have persuaded the judge to come to a different decision.

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Campaign leader Cllr Terrie Smith said: "We accept that the farmer has had a tenancy agreement since 2017, but up until then he had a rolling three month grazing licence, which is consistent with the land being designated open space.

"It's not clear who knew about the change, whether it was publicised or indeed whether it was even legal. 

"It seems like much of Herts County Council policy it was based on assumption that the land was not designated open space even though neither we nor they can find any documentation to show this was the case."

The group now has two weeks to prepare its legal argument ahead of the next stage of the ongoing dispute.