Winery public inquiry - some observations from the second day...

The second day of the public inquiry was hosted in the main hall (pictured above) of the Corn Exchange, Rochester on Friday 24th March.

Use of main hall seemed like a nice idea compared to the stuffy room of yesterday, but it soon became apparent that the acoustics were terrible, it being impossible to hear anyone speaking from more than a few feet away. The council staff couldn’t have been more helpful, but unfortunately their two available radio microphones didn't seem to work unless you virtually swallowed them, and even then not that well.

The morning was taken up with a “round table” discussion of traffic issues affecting Cuxton, and how the advent of the winery might make things worse.

This was always going to be a hiding to nothing, and not just because of the acoustics. Indeed, part of the reason Medway Council did not cite traffic as a reason for refusing the original application is that the various transport guidelines are so broad that attempting to defend a planning refusal on traffic grounds alone is virtually impossible from a legal perspective.

Nevertheless, Cuxton Parish Council felt they had to give it a try given the strength of feeling in the village.

It is a fact of life that councils and traffic planners aren’t that bothered about anyone’s inconvenience. If it takes you ten minutes of get out of the end of Bush Road in the morning, it matters not to them. Safety is (quite rightly) the only consideration.

We put across the argument that we felt the A228 junction with Bush Road is a dangerous one, and why.

We talked about how large lorries and HGVs cause constant problems along Bush Road, especially at school run times.

We asked why our “lived experience” of traffic in Bush Road seemed so different to the expert’s view that there wasn’t a problem, and wondered if an urban traffic model was suitable for application to Cuxton’s semi-rural location.

We mentioned that the Vineyard Farms had hinted at expansion plans that could give rise to traffic volumes way beyond those covered by their assessments.

Vineyard Farm’s transport consultant, James Bevis listened to it all quite patiently and just smiled. His message was quite simple.

Like it or not, folks, all the survey numbers say that there isn’t a traffic problem in Cuxton, at least, not when judged against national guidelines for that sort of thing. The winery traffic won’t make a jot of difference to that. All the HGVs we see in the village are nothing to do with Vineyard Farms’ existing operations at Luddesdown, apparently. And the junction isn’t classed as “dangerous” because enough people haven’t been killed to call it so.

Mr. Bevis was quite pleasant and almost apologetic about it all. Indeed, he showed that you didn’t necessarily have to be a shouty bully in order to put your client’s case across effectively.

"... but our numbers say..."

He stopped short of saying that any congestion we see in Bush Road must therefore be a hallucination upon our part, but I kind of got the impression that he would have just loved to have done.

There were one or two emotional observations from residents, which Mr. Bevis dealt with politely but firmly. Sorry, folks, it is what it is. Lorry headlights giving you problems? Buy some curtains, they work really well...

And after a couple of hours, that was that. I don’t think we made much of an impression.

One can only hope that the inspector perhaps made a note of the observation that in their submission documents, Vineyard Farms stated that they saw this application as being just the first part of an “estate-wide strategy”. This implies expansion plans not included in any transport assessment. Similarly, their Transport Assessment states that they could double wine production from 5 to 10 million bottles a year. This doubling of output was not considered in any “worst case” traffic scenario.

It was the one argument Mr. Bevis seemed a bit evasive about. I hope the inspector noted that.

The afternoon session saw us give up on the main hall and return to the stuffy room of yesterday. At least it was possible to hear everyone speak and with far fewer audience members, it was at least bearable.

The topic was one of “landscaping” and was part of the AONB defence being made by Medway Council. The council’s expert was a Mr. Etchells, who spent about 30 minutes calmly going through numerous arcane examples of how, in his opinion, Vineyard Farms had underestimated the adverse impact that the winery building would have on the appearance and tranquillity of a previously undeveloped and unspoilt AONB.

To me, his arguments all seemed pretty reasonable.

However, they seemed (to me) to make Mr. Sasha White KC quite angry (on his client’s behalf, I assume). He piled into the unfortunate Mr, Etchells, asking complex questions in machine-gun fashion and demanding “yes or no” answers. One had to admire Mr. Sasha White KC's grasp of the material and I can only assume (having had no experience of this sort of thing) that this is how top KCs normally operate. It all seemed unnecessarily aggressive, intimidating and confrontational to me.

To begin with, Mr. Etchells handled it all quite well, but the relentless onslaught from Mr. Sasha White KC clearly began to fluster him after a while. In the end, the inspector intervened and said he was quite happy to hear “qualified” answers to complex questions, and Mr. Sasha White KC subsequently dialled it down a little.

Quite what the planning inspector made of it all, I don’t know. I suppose he must be used to it.

I certainly couldn’t work out what the conclusion was. I suppose we will have to wait until the end of the inquiry.

Unfortunately and rather frustratingly for me, I tested positive for Covid over the weekend and so I shall be unable witness further proceedings. I hope others will keep me up to date.