A farmer had an angry confrontation with City of York Council officials today after he blocked off a public highway to protect his cattle against foot and mouth disease.

Roy Handley, of Drome Farm, Elvington, put up the seven-bar metal gate and attached it to fence posts with chains and padlocks after his requests to dog walkers not to walk on the land went unheeded.

He has a 260-acre mixed farm, and claims cows and sheep use the fields on either side of the highway, called Langwith Common Lane but known locally as Gypsy Wood Lane.

Just before 10am today, council workers cut the padlocks, just as Mr Handley spotted them and climbed over a fence to confront them.

He said: "If they had come to me this morning and told me I can't close that right of way I would have brought them the keys to open the locks, but they just waded in like bullies."

Turning to Glen Donaldson, technical clerk for the highway regulation department of the council, Mr Handley said: "When 600 of my sheep get foot and mouth, I'll call you to come and watch them being killed. Then we'll see how much of a man you are."

Mr Donaldson said: "I'm just doing my job."

Peter Evely, the council's head of highway regulation, said that because the lane was a highway it could not be closed unless it lay within an officially infected area, which was not the case.

The council has conducted a foot and mouth risk assessment and it has been judged safe for the lane to be open.

He said: "Langwith Common Lane is a public highway in exactly the same sense as Parliament Street or Walmgate in York.

"The lane used to be a road that went from one side of Langwith Common to the other.

"Elvington airfield cut it in half and therefore it became no use.

"No one has the right to close a public highway. The only people who can do that is ourselves. Even under foot and mouth, the authority has no right to close a public highway. We can only close highways if the area is declared an infected area."

Mr Handley said: "I asked the dog walkers to stop coming here and they said I couldn't stop them so I put the gate up.

"I've got cows on one side and sheep on the other. The council want to make up their minds about what they're doing about blocking rights of way."

Mr Handley said a neighbour had been attempting to get the lane turned into a footpath for two years as cars often drive down, find themselves at a dead end and get stuck.

He said: "I'm forever pulling them out."

Updated: 15:17 Wednesday, April 18, 2001