South Oxfordshire District Council has been ordered to pay the price for losing a High Court bid to close down greyhound kennels it claimed posed a danger to motorists on the A40 trunk road.

The council must pay 3,000 legal costs in its attempt to overturn an Department of the Environment planning inspector's decision that the kennels can stay.

The kennels are housed in a former agricultural building off Mill Lane, Marston, near Oxford. In 1996, land owner William McLoughlin was refused retrospective planning permission to keep the kennels on the site on safety grounds.

An appeal by Mr McLoughlin's to the Environment Department failed. He again sought planning consent only to be refused a second time by the council. But on November 30 last year, a planning inspector upheld his appeal.

Yesterday at London's High Court, Deputy High Court Judge Christopher Lockhart-Mummery dismissed the district council's appeal against the inspector's decision.