Field to Farm
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Hello everyone, My partner and I have been farming our own land for the last four and a half years. We started before we knew about the field to farm book and so have probably done everything completley the wrong way round.
We started with a rented 3.5 acre field and now own 33 acres comprising of pasture and mature woodland. We were newbies at planning and got a planning advisor that we had heard was very good. He advised us to do everything retrospectively...I know, bad move, we know that now.
So we placed a mobile home and livestock in paddocks on the land and then applied. So, the council and a few of our rich neighbours got annoyed and hence we have been fighting both while farming to stay on site. Our business is making money (mainly free range eggs sold locally) for us to run the farm and pay our bills ,etc. But it is not enough for our planning council who want an unreasonably high turnover. We had asked for a three year temp period (before NPPF was started), and the council have turned this down every time. Anyway after a few enforcement notices and the need to move the mobile home around to new on site locations. We have no more moves we can make and have to cease living in the mobile.
We managed to get permission for a small barn to be built four years ago for machinery, animal feed storage and to grade and store our collected eggs.
The council have told us that we have to cease living in the mobile home and to remove it from the site. We have a house that we own that is 30 mins (0n a good day) drive away, that we have not been living in all this time as we are renovating it in our spare time in the hope of selling it to fund an eventual farmhouse when we got to the full permission stage, so it has not been rented out at any point.
Ok...we asked them, that rather than using the mobile to live in. Could we not just use it as a Health and Safety advised rest area once it has been cleared of all personal items that could class it as being used a a residential unit for an agricultural worker, rather than having to go to all the effort and expense of removing the unit from the land or breaking it up on site, because we still need somewhere to rest, hide from bad weather and prepare and eat meals and clean ourselves up between farm jobs.
They said we could "probably" have an on site rest shelter as advised in the HSE Welfare at Work document (leaflet no. - INDG293(rev1) ) that we provided a copy for them to see. But, they said that we would have to take the existing mobile home off site and then apply for a whole new/second hand one to be put back on the land. This sounds rather ridiculous.
Can we not keep the already on site mobile home as a rest area and not a living unit, rather than removing/destroying it and having to get another one of similar size that has all the same facilities as the current one (kitchen, shower, toilet, dining area), or do we have to do as the council has ordered. Should we write to them and ask them to show the legal documents that prove we can't use the onsite mobile as a rest area instead of going to all the trouble and expense of removing it and getting a different one put back on??
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