THE legal battle to stop a waste Incinerator being built at Ardley could have cost up to £18m, Oxfordshire County Council has said.

The council has blamed protesters for causing delays that have led to spiralling costs, while opponents said the 25-year contract with operator Viridor had been signed too early.

A legal challenge by pressure group Ardley Against Incinerator (AAI) collapsed on Thursday, when a judge ruled it should not be heard in the Court of Appeal.

It marked the end of a two-year battle to stop the plant being built.

Council spokesman Gemma Watts said: “The costs of the delay caused by the challenge mounted by Ardley Against Incinerator is estimated to be between £12m and £18m. The cost will only be known once the start date for construction becomes certain. This rise is mainly caused by the increase in the cost of building the facility, which goes up until the notice to start construction is given.”

The county councillor responsible for infrastructure, Lorraine Lindsay-Gale, said the council and contractor Viridor now had to try to “absorb” as much of the costs as possible, but some of the burden would fall on taxpayers.

She said: “I am all for local democracy. I would not be a councillor if I was not.

“But I do believe once we have been through the democratic process and lost the argument, which they did through the planning process, campaigners should accept it – particularly if the delay is costing everybody in the county a lot of money.”

She said the contract with Viridor meant that increased delays added to the costs, while the council has had to continue paying Landfill Tax on unrecycled waste. Ms Lindsey-Gale said she hoped building work would now start “very soon”.

But campaigners said the costs would not have spiralled if councillors had waited until the planning process had ended before signing the £651m deal with Viridor.

Councillors backed the 25-year contract last August – even though the public inquiry into the firm’s initial planning application was still under way.

County councillor Catherine Fulljames, who represents the village, said: “I think the process was very wrong, and probably many others do as well.

“The whole process of how they chose the operator and then tried to get the planning permission seemed to me the wrong way round. Nineteen villages were against this, and local people fighting it wanted to do everything they could right up to Thursday. We cannot deny them that – it was their right.”

AAI chairman Jon O’Neill said: “I want to know how much of this is because they took a risk signing the legal and financial agreements with Viridor before they had a definitive judgement on the first planning application.”

He said plans for legal action by AAI were launched 16 months ago.