CAMPAIGNERS have vowed to keep battling despite suffering another blow in their fight to save a field from a £44m education and leisure development.

Members of Consett Green Spaces Group (CGSG) saw their bid to have Consett’s Belle Vue, on which Durham County Council wants to build a £29m academy school and near-£15m leisure centre, thrown out by the council’s highways committee today.

But afterwards, John Campbell, the group’s chairman, said: "We have go to away and consider our options. This might just be the end of round one.

"I’m disappointed but not surprised."

Although the decision cannot be appealed, CGSG could mount a legal challenge and seek a judicial review.

Earlier, Mr Campbell had urged councillors to declare Belle Vue a village green, which would have protected it from development, ‘on behalf of the people of Consett’.

Councillor Owen Temple told committee members the hopes and fears of hundreds of people in Consett hung on their decision.

But Pat Holding, a solicitor speaking for the council, said just because a piece of land looked and felt like a village green, this did not necessarily mean it could be registered as such.

She urged councillors to support the recommendation of barrister Edwin Simpson, issued in October following a public inquiry he held in July, that CGSG’s request be refused.

Belle Vue was ‘open space’ because it had been used by consent and ‘as of right’; not a ‘village green’ used by ‘unchallenged trespass’ and ‘by right’, Mrs Holding said.

Argument focused on what status the land was given under a 1964 deed.

Afterwards, Mr Campbell said: "Bizarrely, it looks as if a deed from 1964 to protect the site is the very thing that stops it getting village green status."

The village green application was rejected by six votes to four. Proposals to reject the bid were moved by Couns David Marshall and Robin Todd and seconded by Eddie Tomlinson and Anne Wright.

Council chiefs hope the new-build academy, which is set to replace Moorside Community Technology College and Consett Community Sports College, will open in 2014.