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Search the Public Notice PortalA Herefordshire farm has formally appealed against being made to remove 33 workers’ static caravans and to stop using its main building for imported vegetable processing.
In June, Herefordshire Council served an enforcement notice on AS Green, based at Rook Row Farm, Mathon near the Worcestershire border, following many years of planning wrangles over the expansion of the farm business.
The notice required the farm to cease “non-agricultural purposes including general industrial, storage, distribution and residential use” within six months.
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The 33 adjacent caravans, along with separate “containerised accommodation”, all utility connections and any “domestic paraphernalia”, were to be removed within nine months.
But now the farm has appealed against the enforcement to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate on several grounds.
The farm says it has a “functional need” for seasonal worker accommodation, without which the “multi-million pound business could not function”, and that this “is acceptable in terms of landscape and drainage”.
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Having up to 220 workers over the course of a season living on-site “reduces vehicle movements”, its appeal adds – though it offered to relocate three of the caravans nearest the listed farmhouse building to address heritage concerns.
The farm claims that at the time of the notice, it was not engaged in the “non-agricultural” processing of imported vegetables, as “the final packed overseas produce left the packhouse en-route to supermarket six days before the notice was served on us”.
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They further claim that the use of the land for temporary accommodation has been continuous since 2002, even though “the number and nature of caravans may have changed over that period” – leaving the area “immune from enforcement” as more than ten years have now elapsed.
The farm lastly claims that the nine-month period to remove the caravans and associated infrastructure is “woefully inadequate” and seeks an 18-month compliance period instead, “giving the appellant 12 months from the final date for vacation of the accommodation to comply”.
A Planning Inspectorate spokesperson confirmed: “An inspector has been appointed, the hearing is set to start on November 17 and is scheduled for three sitting days.”
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