36 • The Sunday Times Magazine
I
decided recently to turn an
unused lambing barn into a
small, wood ’n’ sawdust café that
would sell good food that had
been grown and reared locally.
This is the kind of ginghamy,
low-impact thing that makes
foodies and eco enthusiasts
priapic with delight.
And having spent thousands on
advisers and landscape architects,
I was thrilled that my plan
passed muster with the parish
council, Thames Valley Police,
Oxfordshire county council’s
transport division, West
Oxfordshire district council’s
drainage division, their
environmental health people and,
especially, their very helpful
business development department.
Sure, the CPRE (formerly
Campaign to Protect Rural
England) objected and there
were 52 people in the area whose
real-ale-infused red trousers were
glowing puce with nimby-induced
rage. But unusually 12 locals had
written to the council, off their
own bat, to pledge their support.
That rarely happens, I’m told.
All of this meant the planning
permission would be a shoo-in,
so I bought the cows that would
produce the beef we’d need, and
built them a barn. I also built hen
houses that would produce the
eggs and my son gave up his job in
London to come and make sauces
from the chillies I was growing.
Other farmers in the area
pledged their support too, which
isn’t surprising as I’d be paying
rather more than what they
could get selling their pork andA planning subcommittee scuppers my
café — for now. But I’m not finished yet
The day I lost
to the nimbys
Jeremy Clarkson
Farming
vegetables and chickens to the
supermarkets.
So, in the spring, after I’d worked
on the lambing barn, fitting
lavatories and cladding it in timber
from my own woods, and I’d
landscaped the grounds, there’d
be a ready supply of local food.
Brilliant. Except it’s not because,
as you may have read recently,
planning permission was refused.
The fateful meeting where
this happened was held in a pus-
coloured room at the headquarters
of the West Oxfordshire district
council, in Witney. Inside there
was a lot of press, an angry rich
couple from my local village and,
facing the local civil servants and
minute-takers, ten councillors
from the planning subcommittee.
I scanned them carefully, trying
to spot the Liberal Democrats
who might oppose my plan
because I’d once hosted a car
show. But they all seemed fairly
decent. One was an old mate.
Another was wearing tweed. So
I was pretty relaxed when the
chairman opened proceedings by
inviting the rich angry couple’s
barrister to explain in less than
three minutes why permission for
my café should be refused.
I was looking forward to this
because he had a badly spelt
report containing an idiotic
mathematical miscalculation.
It reckoned, for example, the car
park I wanted would cover 500
acres, not 0.5 of an acre. But
instead of using these hilariously
inaccurate facts and figures,
representing his onlooking
clients, he launched into a
character assassination of me,
saying my behaviour was
“shameful” and that I had a “give
me an inch and I’ll take a mile
attitude to planning”. He didn’t
actually say I smelt like a wee and
a poo but only, I suspect, because
he ran out of time.
A bit perturbed, I didn’t use the
full allocation of three minutes toput my case. I just stammered my
way through an explanation that
farms cannot survive unless
they’re allowed to diversify and
then, mercifully, the floor was
handed over to the councillors
so that the process of local
democracy could begin.
It was horrific. They didn’t seem
to have any facts to hand and one
of them wondered why I couldn’t
open the café on someone else’s
farm. Mostly, though, they seemed
to be extremely bothered by the
fact that the barn was in an area
of outstanding natural beauty, not
understanding perhaps that it’s
only beautiful because farmers
keep it that way. They also seemed
concerned about how much
lighting would be needed and
how this would affect the night
skies. Not as much as nearby RAF