TWO brothers fear they face financial ruin and jail in a long-running legal battle with Oxfordshire County Council.

Ron and Mick Wyatt will face a hearing in the High Court on Wednesday, September 7, in which they could be found in contempt over the fallout from their use of building rubble to create Waterstock Golf Club in the 1990s.

The county council has pursued the pair through the courts since 1997, trying to force them to remove waste it still believes is buried there.

When the club was built, tens of thousands of cubic metres of waste from the construction of the nearby M40 service station was used to shape the course.

That prompted 14 years of legal action by County Hall to secure its removal.

Last year, the High Court ruled the injunction requiring the waste to be removed had not been complied with and imposed a suspended sentence on the Wyatts, with a condition they undertake work to remove it by May 2011.

The brothers insist all the waste has gone but the council says much of it is still there.

Ron Wyatt, 69, said the pair had been left penniless after spending £1.5 million on the long-running legal battle.

He said: “My brother and I have been in business for 40 years and everything we have made has just gone.

“We have to live hand-to-mouth at the golf course now.

“We had never been in trouble with the county council before and it was the first time we had ever seen inside a court.

“Now I could be put in jail and that does not bear thinking about.

“I’m just an ordinary bloke who built a golf course.

“When you raise your head above the parapet in Great Britain, you are going to get it shot at by all kinds of people.

“That is what happened to us.”

Mr Wyatt said that from the beginning, the brothers had sought advice and been assured using the rubble was legal.

Now he concedes they were wrong.

He said: “We have been on the back foot ever since, so much so that we have not been able to complete our golf course.

“This is the final part. Our freedom is at stake.”

Mr Wyatt said 44,000 tonnes – or 2,200 lorry loads – of waste had been taken to landfill sites over the last year.

But county council spokesman Owen Morton said: “We have monitored the site (since last year) and have notified the court that we consider the waste still remains. It will now be for the court to make judgement on the case.”

In 2007, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Oxfordshire County Council had spent £187,000 on pursuing action against the brothers through the courts.

Mr Morton added: “"Since 2007 this continuing action has incurred further costs for the council, although we have had some costs awarded to us against the Wyatt brothers.

“Final costs should be clearer after the court