There is a big fuss going on locally at the moment. The farmer just down the hill from me – he of the potato lorries – has put in a planning application to build four huge “broiler sheds” to intensively rear chickens.
The big problem is that this is slap bang in the middle of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the development is industrial in size and scope, and would be clearly visible from the hills. There are also serious concerns about pollution, flooding, increased traffic, smell, and the impact on the tourist trade, including on a local pub with quite a good reputation for food which is directly opposite the site. So there are a number of legitimate concerns that need to be addressed.
Despite this, the local council don’t seem to have been particularly proactive about actually telling anyone about it – sticking a notice to a telephone pole on a fast stretch of road with no stopping places isn’t particularly helpful! Furthermore, the application has been amended part-way through the consultation period to slightly shift the location of the sheds, but those people who had already commented (and were therefore clearly interested parties) were not informed of the change. That I thought was very sloppy practice by the council. Indeed, many of the neighbours most directly affected by the application found out by accident, or by reading about it in the local paper, rather than being properly informed. And many of them are not happy!
I looked out of my living room window a few weeks back to see a man acting suspiciously on my drive. Since I was on my own I decided not to confront him, but just checked that the door was locked. The next day I found a flyer under my car windscreen wiper from “Colwall Action Group” trying to drum up opposition with lots of rather alarmist statements about the proposed development. There’s now nearly 600 comments from local villagers on the Herefordshire Council planning website, the vast majority of which are objections, including from the parish and town councils. Even our local MP has got in on the act. He’s not noticeably proactive or ambitious as far as I can tell as one of his constituents, but he’s clearly decided that, with an election coming up, he risks losing the votes of a significant portion of the residents in the surrounding villages if he doesn’t speak up against the application. There’s even been a petition with several thousand names from PETA the animal welfare people objecting to the development. I’m not sure how much weight that would carry though – intensively reared chicken may be ethically dubious, but it’s entirely legal, and personal morals are not legal grounds to refuse a planning application.
I fully understand that farmers need to diversify to make a living, and someone needs to rear the cheap chickens that fill the supermarket shelves. It’s going to be very interesting to see how much weight the county council gives to local opinion and its statutory obligation to protect the AONB from excessive development, and how much to the farmer’s desire to expand into new areas of production. Either way, I expect the battle will go to appeal, so it could drag on for a while yet.
