Opinion: Standing room only when a planner comes to talk
© Pavel/Adobe Stock I’m off to Montague Farm in East Sussex, which seems to alternate use of its farm buildings as a venue for upmarket weddings and … er … NFU gatherings.
Sadly, it is the latter to which I’ve been invited. So here I am, queuing up for a cup of tea and the chance “to meet a planner from your local council”.
Our host seems surprised by the huge turnout, but planners are a pet hate of all farmers and this is a rare chance to come and throw a proverbial wet sponge at a petty bureaucrat who, as everyone knows, obviously won’t understand farming.
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Such is the crush, most of us find ourselves standing. This adds considerably to the exciting lynch-mob atmosphere that develops as a lone, brave planner is led in looking suitably like a condemned man, minutes from the gallows.
Sensing the mood in the room, our host rather spoils things by saying that this meeting is not about our individual situations regarding planning for things like new farm buildings or farm diversification projects.
I’m devastated. I was hoping to take up most of the hour-long meeting with a series of important questions about the council’s rejection of a kitchen extension to my farmhouse.
Denied the opportunity to raise our own personal planning issues, it takes us a while to find topics that we can all rally around to give this clipboard-wielding, tinpot-unelected dictator a piece of our collective mind.
In the end we find two issues to raise hell about: what will happen to the last surviving livestock market in East Sussex, and is there any chance of building a new slaughterhouse, given that the last one in the county has just closed?
Most of the land in East Sussex is of very poor quality, so livestock farming has always predominated.
The possible future closure of our only market, potentially to be turned into retirement homes, has therefore caused great alarm.
I don’t dare say so, but given that the average age of the farmers in the room appears to be about 84, affordable “senior living” might be just what the assembled company needs.
Perhaps there could be a communal area with a little straw-covered ring and tiered seating around it where we could sit and watch a couple of plastic mechanical cows being shooshed about?
There is a brief argument about whether, if the in-town livestock site is sold for development, it would raise enough money to build an out-of-town one.
But someone points out that, since Brexit, there’s no longer any funding for any cash shortfall and we all grow more morose.
Crosser and crosser, we move on to the issues surrounding the building of a new small slaughterhouse in the county. The planner is told in no uncertain terms how necessary one is.
We’re all developing a nice head of steam when the proprietor of a surviving abattoir in another county suddenly thunders: “Who is going to run this new abattoir of yours?”
Managing his keeps him awake seven nights a week. “And,” he adds, “it’s bloody hard work.” Literally, presumably.
As I travel home, I suppress the thought that the loss of our livestock markets and small local abattoirs might just be the fault of farmers for signing up to direct marketing of their livestock to the big supermarkets and nothing to do with the planners.
Nah. Bureaucrats, they just don’t understand farming.