THERE was a big splash about chicken farms in the business section of the Hereford Times the other week. I am not surprised. Life is so easy for this industry.

When I was informed chicken sheds were coming to Kington I made it a sort of part-time mission to find out why the proponents of these facilities don’t even have to work up a sweat to get them up and running quickly.

In my opinion, if you have Hereford planners acting as a sort of consulting service for the agents of American multi-national Cargill and its suppliers, plus a quirk of fate by which European Community law encourages these people (they don’t even pay rates!), you have little chance of stopping these applications.

Why? The planners just fill in the map for them. When I rang the planning office, a senior official confirmed a chicken shed proponent, or their agent, would be advised against submitting an application if the planning officer knew it had little chance under planning law.

Yet if they came forward with a suitable scheme it would be green lit under the same law. Now if you are rich enough to hire a barrister to fight against these people and win a High Court case against a chicken shed application, perversely Herefordshire taxpayers foot the bill, not the chicken shed proponents, because the planners failed to provide the right advice.

For Kington, the good people of Herefordshire have to find about £60,000 because the planners got it slightly wrong.

So believe me, this 1% of our population can literally roll out what they want over us, the 99%.

Plus there is no light at the end of this tunnel. There will most certainly be sheds coming to a place near you and in this case the front end work is a pushover for local farmers.

They have EC law and planners to make life easy for them. The roads at Kington are now being improved, but it won’t be the chicken shed people contributing. It was a revelation to find out they don’t even pay rates for this activity!

MARK BALCOMBE Kington