Enjoying A Beautiful Walk - Without the Threat of Chicken City

Sometimes you don't realise what you've got until it's gone. It wasn't like that with the chicken broiler farm applications from Messrs Davies and Hern. We all knew what we would lose if they were to go ahead. Now we can enjoy the countryside knowing that the Planning Inspector could see the devastating impact that the huge scale of these buildings would have on this landscape and Dismissed the Appeal to build four sheds housing 160,000 chickens. This would have resulted in around 1.2 million chickens per year. 

The weather was beautiful today - cold at -1C but clear and great for birdlife that was enjoying the sunshine as much as I was.

Here amongst the comments on the application and the NPPF are views around Upton Snodsbury, North Piddle and Naunton Beauchamp, showing the beautiful landscape that was under threat.

View towards North Piddle Church

I think many of the members of the Wychavon Parishes Action Group (WPAG) would have felt as I did that we were never going to give up on fighting the application. The bullishness of Mr Pick the agent for Mr Davies served only to make us want to defeat it more. Fortunately we could see that his behaviour was typical of his attitude at many of the application sites and his ability to antagonise wherever he goes seems to be a theme. He has won very few friends in this process and his failure (whilst quoting an almost 100% success rate on his website!) is a landmark result.

Reeds at Piddle Lake

North Piddle Lane with Mistletoe covered trees

View from North Piddle Lane towards Bredon Hill

Most Bluetits are hard to get decent photos of!

So many blue tits along the lanes, with their constant chatter

Fieldfares are quite common grazing around the sheep grazing

 

View towards Upton Snodsbury

The view from North Piddle towards Upton Snodsbury - the chicken farm site is about 1/2 way between these two points.

Bullfinch

Bullfinch

Blossom!

Great Tit

The Old House, Naunton Beauchamp

Naunton Beauchamp

Naunton Beauchamp

The first sign of Spring - Snowdrops

Naunton Beauchamp cottage - The Way dating from late 1600s

Naunton Beauchamp Cottage dating from late 1600s

Where the National Planning and Policy Framework (NPPF) was designed to simplify matters of planning it only served to open up interpretations of the rules enabling inappropriate developments to go through as many in the countryside will agree. 

The Wildlife Trusts' concern was that Local Councils' policies needed to be robust and up to date. Whilst great in theory, in practice where local plans were delayed the floodgates were opened up to these developments.  

We are fortunate that in our case that the local Council - Wychavon for whom I have the utmost respect for the professional way that they dealt with this high profile application, took a stand that the NPPF criteria had not been met. And the Planning Inspector agreed.

Appeal Dismissed! We won!

This is the email that we were absolutely thrilled to be able to send out to our database of supporters this week from the Wychavon Parishes Action Group (WPAG) Committee.

"You will no doubt be as delighted as we are at the news today that the Planning Inspectorate have Dismissed the Appeal to develop 4 chicken sheds by Edward Davies on land adjacent to Froghall Bungalow.

The unanimous verdict to refuse planning permission by Wychavon District Council on 12th September 2014 on the basis of Visual Impact on the Landscape has been upheld. 

This is a critical decision and will have major implications for other planning applications nearby and for similar developments in the planning stage in other parts of the UK.

We would like to thank everybody in the community for supporting our campaign - it would not have been possible without you.

For further information on the campaign and for links to the planning inspectorate document which are posted on the Wychavon Council Planning website please visit www.no-chicken-farm.org.

Thank you for your support!

So Mr Edward Davies can only develop two sheds at the location. 

The field which will only ever have at most two sheds on it - if any!

The implications are huge. Most importantly for those who would have been downwind of the site and for those who live next door to it or overlook it whose lives would have been forever changed. The Planning Inspector rightly determined that the presence of regimented enormous industrial units against the backdrop of productive fields and sheep farming with scattered settlements was just plain wrong.

This is the summary of the decision to Dismiss the Appeal -

"By virtue of its overall scale and extent, the proposals for the erection of four poultry units and associated ancillary works on this undeveloped rural site would have a harmful visual impact upon and would undermine the character, appearance and openness of the countryside. The harmful impacts would fail to be fully mitigated by any landscaping proposed. Such harm would not be outweighed by the economic benefits that the development would deliver. Therefore, the proposal does not represent sustainable development as defined in the National Planning Policy Framework. The proposal also fails to accord with adopted saved Wychavon District Local Plan (2006) Policies ENV1 and ECON7 and emerging South Worcestershire Development Plan Policy SWDP25." 

 

For links to the Planning Inspectorate decision on the Wychavon Website please click here.