Developer Banks has applied to the Administrative Court in London to overturn its own planning permission for the site after lawyers acting for Friends of the Earth found legal flaws in the plans.

The plans for 300 homes and industrial units on the land near Denby were granted by Amber Valley Borough Council's planning board in January.

It came despite opposition from surrounding residents, including the Cinderhill Opposition Group, who had vowed to fight the scheme through the courts.

Today Banks vowed to submit another plan to develop the 273-acre site, once the current one has been quashed in court.

However, after taking legal advice Banks has decided the 'poor wording' of one condition imposed by the council on the scheme about it coming up with a plan to remediate any contaminated land would mean the authority would not, in reality, have any power to actually force it to carry out the work.

Banks says as things stand it would be legally allowed to build on the contaminated land without carrying out its plans to remediate it first.

David Gosling, from Banks Developments, said: "The idea that we would build on contaminated land and try to sell houses on there is so absurd it's hardly worth bothering with, but legally Friends of the Earth is right.

"This could have taken 12 to 18 months to go through a judicial review and would have cost a lot of money. The delays probably would have suited Friends of the Earth and the opposition group because they are intending to be deliberately obstructive.

"After taking legal advice we decided the quickest, cheapest and simplest way around this would be for us to seek to quash the planning permission ourselves. The proposal will then go back to the council as it did in January.

"This won't put us off, we're still keen to develop this land and provide houses and jobs."

Peter Carney, chief executive of Amber Valley Borough Council, defended the conditions in the planning permission and said they would have been adequate to see the development built.

Mr Carney said: "We took advice on the conditions put forward and we advised council that those conditions were capable of being implemented and the development could have gone ahead.

"There is no legal precedent on this which means it could have gone to the High Court and Court of Appeal, taking many months and costing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"I don't want to put the public purse at risk and cause further delay to what we as officers believe is a strategic site for the borough.

"All of these technicalities are delaying development of an important site for the borough. The best way forward is to bring this back to council as soon as possible to be re-determined. This way council could meet to reconsider it as soon as June or July this year."