I WRITE to you to deplore the decision by the cabinet of the Tory-led administration to sell Herefordshire Council’s smallholdings.

I was the chairman of the Task and Finish Group which was asked by the administration to have a deep look into the entire matter of the farms owned by the county.

After exhaustive research, the group came up with the conclusion that the council should retain the majority of the farms, re-organise them and put them on a much better footing with the strong expectation that this would lead to a much better through-put of young farmers being able to make a start in farming on their own account.

This tied in with the farming history and ethos of Herefordshire and the general feeling that the council should retain its interest in the farming community – the backbone of the county.

Part of our review entailed a look at the Fisher German report on our county farms. However, when we saw the report it had been redacted to such an extent that it barely made any sense at all and all its conclusions were hidden from us. Not much help!

This report had been specially commissioned, at great expense (possibly £50,000-£70,000) by the administration itself. When it came to the cabinet meeting, where the decision on the future of the county farms was to be taken, we were told that the Fisher German report had formed no part of the background papers, and had not been taken into consideration in the cabinet’s discussions and therefore any request to see the report through a Freedom of Information request would fail.

It seems astonishing to me that an expensive and thorough report, commissioned by the administration itself, should be totally ignored and allegedly not even used as background information.

Could it be, I ask, that the conclusions of the report were broadly in line with the recommendations of the Scrutiny Task and Finish Group and were therefore unacceptable to the cabinet, hellbent on selling the county farms at all costs?

I may be called a cynic, but I call myself a realist. It grieves me deeply that our county farms are now on the blocks for sale despite many, powerful recommendations to the contrary.

What a waste of the money spent on the report and I hope that the considerable efforts of the Task and Finish Group were not merely a smokescreen.

I am, above all, concerned for the future not only of the county farms, but especially for the future of all those involved in the farms.

SEBASTIAN BOWEN Chairman, General Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Herefordshire Council