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| The main hall, Corn Exchange, Rochester... |
The public inquiry into Medway Council’s rejection of the Vineyard Farm plans to build a massive viticultural theme park on green belt land at Upper Bush began at Rochester’s Corn Exchange on Thursday.
There seemed to be quite a good turn-out of Cuxton residents, maybe around 40 people. It was a shame that they were crowded into a stuffy side room rather than the rather splendid main hall pictured above, but the latter had been pre-booked in the late afternoon for a wake for a popular local businessman.
The opening session saw the protagonists introduce themselves
to the inspector, a Mr. Stephen Wilkinson. Representing the cast of doubtlessly
highly-paid experts from Vineyard Farms was Mr Sasha White, KC (King’s Council,
and definitely and most certainly nothing to do with the Sunshine Band). Mr.
White is one of the top KCs in the
If ever you needed evidence of the infinitely deep pockets of the owner of Vineyard Farms, then the mere presence of someone like Mr. White KC in the room on their behalf was it. And you’d better hope that Mr. White KC was on your side if you ever had to present such evidence.
He quickly established the case for the winery and it became apparent that much hinged on being able to demonstrate that the massive luxury restaurant, visitor’s centre etc. etc. was in fact, merely an agricultural building such as you might find on any working farm.
Of this, Mr. White KC was ferociously certain. There could be no doubt at all, for Mr. White KC was in full and unalienable freehold possession of A Legal Precedent. Thus, there could be no credible arguments against his client’s magnificent and iconic winery. The End.
I’ll give an explanation of, and a few observations upon, “The Precedent” a bit later.
Medway Council were represented by their own brief, who was a one-day stand in for the usual chap, a Dr. Rouse. They would be contesting the applicant’s appeal on grounds of Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) conservation only, given that Medway’s council’s planners had excluded other arguments from the formal rejection notice.
And, on behalf of Cuxton’s residents, Paul Pattison spoke for the “Rule Six parties”, a trio of plucky local people who have bravely put themselves in the way of the clenched fist of the Silverhand Estate to try and fight off this development.
They had already been advised that they could not “formally” contest green belt issues unless they were prepared to take the risk of having costs awarded against them (something they naturally declined to do) and so their case would be (as I understand it) confined to presenting their views to the inspector on certain topics, rather than attempting to argue directly against the applicant’s case.
Also in the audience was KentOnLine’s Local Democracy Reporter, although whether our high-quality local news outlet will be able to make room for her copy in amongst its normal click-bait of Brexit, immigrants in boats, “compo” faces and advertorials for Wetherspoons is another matter.
Around 90 minutes had been set aside for people to make presentations as “interested parties” to the planning inspector.
The inspector naturally needed to have an idea of how many people wanted to speak, with would-be presenters having to register their interest with Medway Council in advance. It seemed, however, that Medway Council had not passed the list on to the inspector who, unsurprisingly, was a little taken aback by this.
As might be expected though, Mr. Wilkinson has a reassuring air of not being readily rattled by anything and he soon organised the speakers, although presentation time for each was rather curtailed.
First, we got to hear from Councillor Simon Curry, who spoke about the conflict of the winery development with the history of the area, its unclear local benefits and the adverse impact upon the local traffic. Our own ward councillor, Matt Fearn, was obviously unable to attend and Simon was speaking as an “interested party” and private individual rather than as a councillor.
This did not stop the fearsome Mr. Sasha White KC from tearing into him at the end, quizzing him about his decision to vote against the winery development at the March 2022 planning committee meeting. Simon was a bit taken aback (as anyone would be) but handled it pretty well, I thought.
Not surprisingly, this made the subsequent speakers rather nervous.
Fortunately, Mr White KC remained quiescent thereafter and we got to hear about the behaviour of the applicants towards residents of Upper Bush and the adverse impact we are already seeing upon the local area as a result of their activities. To me, this was the most powerful presentation of the day: I had no idea just how the behaviour and activities of Vineyard Farms' operators had degraded the quality of Upper Bush resident's lives. "Living in fear" was one shocking phrase that stuck in my mind, and hopefully in that of the Planning Inspector's as well.
We also heard some well-thought-out (and well articulated) presentations on the loss of dark skies, the lack of value that the winery would actually bring to the local community, (questioning the “need” for such a thing and its claim to offer “very special circumstances”), and also the impact of the winery upon our poor old local badger population, a family of which have apparently been in residence in the area for over a hundred years.
All of these are regulatory reasons not to grant planning permission.
A few residents also made some passionate speeches around the traffic situation, something Medway Council did not want to make a case out of because it is difficult to argue from a planning perspective – and especially when you have been so supportive of the applicant’s plans in the past…
The inspector, Mr. Wilkinson, wound things up early as the “interested party” session had rather over-run, but I think the community of Cuxton (and particularly those of Upper Bush) took good advantage of the opportunity to get its views across.
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