A FARMER has lost her Appeal Court bid to prevent National Grid contractors gaining access to her land to erect electricity pylons.

Widow Rosalind Craven, 61, of Home Farm, Huby Burn, near Easingwold, North Yorkshire, had confronted representatives of the company last September, barring them from her property.

A High Court hearing in Leeds in December ruled that the electricity company had a legal right to enter the land, and yesterday, Mrs Craven went to London's Appeal Court in an effort to overrule that decision.

But Lord Justice Brooke told her she had taken the wrong route through the legal system.

The judge gave the National Grid the go-ahead to begin work on three 46-metre pylons on her land.

The work will form part of a controversial plan to build a line of pylons from Teesside to Shipton-by-Beningbrough.

Mrs Craven said the National Grid had not given landowners affected by the scheme proper notice of its intention to build the pylons.

But Lord Justice Brooke dismissed the appeal, saying the company had served notices on landowners in compliance with statutory regulations.

The legal route she should have taken was to seek judicial review of the pylon construction plans, but the three-month time limit to do so had expired.

The judge said: "Mrs Craven cannot now raise the complaints she could have raised then, in order to challenge the decision that was made.

"She claims that, as a citizen without legal representation and without the resources that are available to National Grid, it would be understandable and ought to be forgivable that she did not challenge the decision within the statutory time limit of three months.

"Unfortunately, our public law does not work in that way."