An incinerator will not be built on Green Belt land near St Albans after a Government decision to refuse planning permission was upheld.

In July 2014, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles rejected waste firm Veolia’s plans for a 380,000-tonne-a-year waste burner to be built in New Barnfield, one mile from Colney Heath, but in January this year a High Court ruling overturned the Government’s decision.

The energy firm argued in the High Court that Mr Pickles had not taken into account the special circumstances that New Barnfield had been endorsed as an allocated waste site by a planning inspector.

The planning application was referred back to Mr Pickles for reconsideration, but the Government’s final decision on the proposals made on Friday was that the incinerator plans would not go ahead.

In its decision, the Department of Communities and Local Government said: “Though the site of the proposed building is already developed, the Secretary of State also considers that the building’s very large bulk and visual prominence compared with existing structures would be detrimental to the visual perception of the remaining gap between Hatfield and Welham Green. For this reason he considered that the proposed building would be harmful in terms of another of the purposes of the Green Belt – to prevent neighbouring settlements merging into one another.”

In response to the decision, Keith McGurk, Veolia’s regional director, said: “This innovative facility would have extracted further recyclable material from Hertfordshire’s black bag waste before generating electricity for the national grid by treating what remains.

“It would have supported both local investment and job creation.”

Hertfordshire County Council spent nearly £6million supporting the project.

Green Party councillor Simon Grover, who represents St Peters ward, said: “It’s fantastic news that this expensive, dirty, unnecessary proposal has finally been buried by the Secretary of State.

“The county council should never have entertained the idea of an incinerator, and in doing so they have unfortunately wasted a hug amount of local taxpayers’ money.

“There are cleaner, greener, cheaper alternatives to incineration that also provide more local jobs.

“I look forward to the county council exploring these urgently and getting them going.”