Way back in September 2021, I poured scorn on what I thought was an outrageous piece of sophistry by Vineyard Farms in their planning application for their luxury winery on green belt land at Upper Bush near Cuxton.
Central to the applicant’s case throughout the planning process has been the claim that the proposed 16,000m2 £30 million tourist, hospitality and manufacturing facility comprising of an above-ground restaurant, café, visitor’s centre, wine-tasting area and shop, designed to serve an initial 65,000 visitors a year, combined with a subterranean (and therefore not visible) wine factory having a capacity to produce up to 10m bottles of wines a year, is a mere “agricultural building”.
This argument is important to them, possibly because it’s the only one they have.
National planning guidelines state that:
“A local planning authority should regard the construction of new buildings as inappropriate in the Green Belt”.
…and that:
“When considering any planning application, local planning authorities should ensure that substantial weight is given to any harm to the Green Belt. ‘Very special circumstances’ will not exist unless the potential harm to the Green Belt by reason of inappropriateness, and any other harm resulting from the proposal, is clearly outweighed by other considerations”.
However, they go on to state:
“Exceptions to this are…buildings for agriculture and forestry…”
This exception allows the applicants to bypass considerations of satisfying the “very special circumstances” that set a very high bar in terms of green belt development, one that even this design would probably not otherwise clear.
To “lay” people such as ourselves, it would seem that such a large facility, with its tourist elements so prominently placed on view in such a protected and environmentally-sensitive landscape, could hardly be considered to be an “agricultural building”.
It seems laughable. Indeed, Medway Council's planning officers should have thrown it all out at the pre-application stage and saved everyone (especially themselves) a load of unnecessary grief.
It all seems rather at odds with Gravesham Borough Council's unwillingness to support Meopham Vineyard's application to build a similar but much more modest winery overlooking Happy Valley in Meopham.
Nevertheless, a legal precedent exists that would appear to justify such a thing, one which has been extensively quoted by the applicant since pre-application days.
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| Just a farm shop, guv'nor, honest, just like wot you'd get on any other farm... |
And when a guy like Mr. Sasha White KC (Vineyard Farms’ advocate and one of the leading legal planning experts in the
This legal precedent initially
arose (perhaps somewhat ironically) out of a dispute around traffic. David
Millington ran (and still runs, I think) the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard, which is located
near Wroxeter, not far to the east of
Compared to the Vineyard Farms operation it is tiny, with a mere 12 acres under vines. To help his little vineyard along, Mr. Millington and his family started providing visitors with snacks and drinks in addition to making and selling his wine on site.
His little winery, a typical example of an agricultural “crinkly tin” shed, backs on to a few houses and it seems that the local residents started to object to the traffic that began to visit Mr. Millington’s increasingly popular venue.
Initially, the local authority tried to block Mr. Millington making, and then selling, his wines and eventually (as these things can do when you have the money to follow it through) it wound up going all the way up to, and then beyond, the Secretary of State, to be debated in the High Court by some of the most senior judges in the land.
The upshot was that
“...the making and selling of wine from grapes grown on the premises (associated vineyard), including tours and tastings, are classified as ‘ancillary agricultural activities’ where the growing of grapes is the primary use. Therefore, winemaking is classified as an agricultural activity (and)… associated vineyard shops and other ancillary businesses on-site are just that; ancillary.” (see reference 1).
This precedent was evidenced in the applicant’s pre-application Planning Statement. It was uncritically accepted by Medway Council’s Planning department until after the planning committee meeting of 8 December 2021, when the planners finally stopped copying Vineyard Farms' homework and got some independent advice. This told them exactly what the scheme's objectors had been telling them for three months, i.e. that the applicant’s proposals constituted “inappropriate development”.
I suspect that by then, Medway Council’s planners, who had been passionate advocates of the Vineyard Farms’ billionaire Xanadu since pre-app days, were now in too deep to back away.
Thus, the planning officers still recommended that the Planning Committee should approve the scheme at the March 2022 meeting, something that the elected councillors of the committee declined to do.
In the subsequent formal rejection notification (written by Medway’s planning officers) green belt considerations were not cited as a reason for rejecting the applicant’s proposals, possibly because Medway Council didn’t fancy now challenging the High Court precedent it had previously accepted as valid.
The "Rule 6 parties" (i.e. Cuxton Parish Council and their supporters) were subsequently advised by the Planning Inspectorate not to formally contest green belt issues at the inquiry, as this may leave them liable for a cost award against them. Pay up or shut up is how major planning applications seem to be decided these days.
On the opening day of the planning inquiry the Vineyard Farms advocate, Mr. Sasha White KC, spelt out that in his legal opinion, a ruling applied to a family-run business operating out of a shed was equally applicable to a Lord Foster £30m pleasure dome, 16,000m2 in total floor area and requiring a staff of 80 to run it.
As “lay” people, we are obviously in no position whatsoever to question Mr. Sasha White KC’s expert opinion on this matter. I certainly wouldn’t dare to. Jesus, that guy would have me on toast...
Nevertheless, I have to repeat that it just seems incredible that a principle applied (not unreasonably) to a small family winery operating out of a modest tin shed is now being used to justify the building of a £30m restaurant, café and hospitality complex with an above-ground area of approximately 4500m2 (and where 80% its projected 82 staff are involved in hospitality activities rather than bottled wine production) on protected green belt land.
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| Farmyard animals settling down for the evening in their "agricultural building..." |
Towards the end of the formal transcript of the
“My own instinctive view on the arguments which we have heard is that the making of wine or cider or apple juice on the scale with which we are concerned is a perfectly normal activity for a farmer engaged in growing wine grapes or apples…” (my emphasis).
This seems to imply that some consideration does indeed need to be given to the scale of winery operation in the context of the above judgement. i.e. what is “perfectly normal” for a vineyard of a dozen or so acres working out of a tin shed may not be for one of, say, 1200 acres and a winery with a total floor area of 1.6 hectares in green belt land.
As stated earlier, the winery that was the subject of the above dispute is the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard, which is located in the Shropshire Hills AONB but is obviously not designated green belt land.
Aerial views that compare the scale of the Wroxeter Roman Vineyard to that of the appeal scheme are shown below.
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| Google maps screen grab of the Wroxeter vineyard area. The winery building is just visible at centre |
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| Google maps screen grab of the VF winery, same scale. |
From Google maps, it can be estimated that the size of the Wroxeter winery building is approximately 370m2. At approximately 4500m2, the visible part of the appeal scheme is an order of magnitude greater than the winery that was the subject of the above judgement.
In terms of scale, I really suspect that Mr. Sasha White KC is pushing the envelope on this one. Not that I’d dare tell him that to his face, of course.
It has been said that, given that the manufacturing part of the appeal scheme comprises 85% of the building’s operational space and is below the ground line, the winery can be compared to an iceberg. In terms of its visible impact, all that can be seen are the hospitality areas.
And as the Titanic found out, it’s the bit you can see that really has the impact.
It’s not just the scale of
operation that casts doubt over the applicability of the
As stated earlier, NPPF green belt development criteria set a “high bar” of “very special circumstances” to permit new developments within green belt land. If the appeal scheme was not considered to be an agricultural building, it is unlikely that it would meet the “very special circumstances” criteria.
While “Gross Value Added” (GVA) estimates provided by the applicant’s clever-clever accounting agents look superficially impressive, when assessed against the overall local economic activity, they are trivial.
Provision of perhaps 150 largely low-skilled jobs of a low-end type (hospitality or agricultural) that employers are already struggling to fill, and in areas of low unemployment like Cuxton, Cobham or Luddesdown, hardly suggest “very special circumstances”.
Similarly, the VF winery is looking (so it says) to bring in 65,000 visitors a year. Medway annual tourism figures are around 4.5 million. An overall increase to Medway’s tourist visitor numbers of 1.4% hardly seems significant.
Other planning guidelines talk about the “need” for a facility that justifies the sacrifice of green belt AONB.
Wine is hardly an essential and
there are plenty of other suppliers in the
Because they want
their visitors to enjoy the view out of their restaurant window across the
Other local vineyards, such as Meopham or Chapel Down, are quite happy to manufacture away from point of harvest. Why can’t Vineyard Farms?
Another factor is that the
The use of an elderly legal precedent to justify what is essentially the construction of a viticultural theme park in precious green belt land seems inappropriate by the standards of today.
There are implications for green belt in general as well. Approval of this scheme could set a precedent that would open up all green belt/AONB land to other such developments. If one billionaire tax-exile is allowed to build a vanity winery on green belt land, then they’ll all want one. Is this a good thing?
Mr. Sasha White KC is arguing the
case for upholding the
Unfortunately, the local community was unable to afford to engage the legal services required to argue otherwise at this inquiry. The threat of having costs awarded against them also helped to silence any formal community argument against green belt development. Even then, can the issue really be resolved at this planning inquiry?
Given this question of the exact
applicability of the
It’s hard to see quite what is going on in the background to all this. Neither Medway Council nor Vineyard Farms wanted green belt issues on the agenda, for obvious reasons. It was the Planning Inspectorate that raised them for discussion.
Vineyard Farms simply have too many highly-paid and highly-polished subject matter experts arguing for them on their behalf for them not to win their appeal under normal circumstances. But this is an extraordinary development, and one that may set a potentially disastrous precedent for green belt/AONB landscapes across the whole of the UK.
Ultimately this will go before the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, for final approval. One would hope that he might refer this case to m’learned friends, in order to debate the assertion of Mr. Sasha White KC that in the eyes of the law, a small tin shed serving 12 acres of vines is just the same as a £30m 16,000m2 luxury vinicultural theme park set in 900 acres of a green belt AONB.
Let's see...
References:
1) South Downs Local Plan, Viticulture Technical Advice Note, April 2021, p10, 3.6.
https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SDNPA-Viticulture-Technical-Advice-Note-TAN.pdf
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