Lower Bush: Past, Present (And Future...?)

Today, I took a walk through Mays Wood and down past the east of Dean Farm... 

Dean Farm, view from the east side...

Fortunately this valley has not been taken over by the adjacent vineyard and remains unspoiled - though it has had its own share of upheaval in the past...

Walking down Tomlins Lane at the back of Dean Farm brings you out by the eastern edge of what used to be called "Pig Field" at Lower Bush. This is now owned by the vineyard and has been partly planted with vines...

No "please" or "thank you"... but at least it's not "Keep Out!... 

By the way, I am sure that folk in Cuxton and the surrounding area will be delighted to know that this "Livestock Grazing" is being funded by a £350,000 hand-out to Vineyard Farms from National Highways. Once upon a time, the rich landowners of Cuxton used to pay a tithe to the church so that the less well-off in the parish could be provided for. Nowadays, it seems things are very much the other way around: tax-payer's money is now used to subsidise a private estate owned by a billionaire tax-exile. 

Vineyard Farms even get to buy an ATV with their public cash windfall. Their boy racers will be so pleased.

Along the edge of Pig Field adjacent to Tomlins Lane, there were at least a dozen or so Broad-Leaved Helleborine orchids in bloom...

Broad-Leaved Helleborine...

Broad-leaved Helleborines...

View of Upper Bush from the top of Pig Field...

Same outlook (roughly) as above, 1972...

Fifty years ago, the woodland plantation between Barrow Hill and Pig Field didn't seem to be as extensive or overgrown as it is today - and nor, of course, did we have the vines. The view above seems to be from slightly further south than I could manage, given the extent of the woods today...

Same view as above, c. 1910...

Pig Field in 1910 was home to a hop garden, the output of which would doubtless have been dried in the oast houses at Upper Bush (long since demolished in the 1950s)...

Upper Bush farmhouse, demolished in the 60s, used to be opposite where the existing farm buildings are today. The tops of the oast houses can be seen on the left...

View towards Cuxton from where the North Downs Way passes by the northern end of the vines...

The warm, wet summer bodes well for the grape harvest...

View looking west from where the North Downs Way crosses Bush Road...

View south-west across Pig Field from Bush Road...

Towards Bush Road from the north-eastern corner of the Pig Field vines...

As above, looking westwards across Bush Road...

View of Forge Cottage, the North Downs B&B and (what used to be) Brick House Farm...

The same view from the North Downs Way, as above, 1972...

Barn conversions, Bush Road...

As above, 1972, before conversion...

As can be seen from the pictures above, Lower Bush has been, and still is, a relatively peaceful and unspoiled place. That could well be about to change.  Many folk have wondered why the strip of land between the North Downs Way and Tomlins Lane has been left weed-strewn and neglected, rather than planted out with vines.  It has been left for Vineyard Farms' Plan B...

The proposed Vineyard Farms Plan B winery...

During the planning inquiry back in March, it became apparent that Vineyard Farms had not really thought too hard about what they would do if they were not granted planning permission for their billionaire-backed £30m vinicultural pleasure dome. It seems as if they thought that their Lord Foster Xanadu was so wonderful and iconic that it would just sail through the planning process. Well, it didn't.

That has left them in a awkward predicament, with the output of 700 acres of vines to process, but with nowhere to do it. Perhaps a less cocksure company might have sorted that out before they planted the vines, but hey...

During the inquiry, a "Proof Of Evidence" package (which seemed to me to have been rather hastily prepared) was introduced, stating what VF would do if they didn't get the planning permission they wanted. As an observer, it seemed to me like a bunch of veiled threats, and ones which were irrelevant to the inquiry (which was surely supposed to be about the proposed Upper Bush winery, not what would happen if it didn't get granted). 

"Approve our plans, or we'll build a load of huge agricultural tins sheds, right next to Bush Road and overshadowing resident's houses. We could build them much further back from the road to avoid that, but no, we aren't going to."

"Oh, and we'll bring all of our farm traffic down Bush Road rather than over our fields, just because we can. And we won't bother composting our grape wastes, because we'd much rather add to the traffic by getting lorries to come and take it away..."

Bush Road, with the entrance to Tomlins Lane on the left...

Same view as above, showing what the winery sheds would look like in situ...

All of this can be done under "permitted development rights", which allows agricultural buildings to be built without planning permission, provided they do not exceed 1000 sq.m. in floor area or 12m in height... 

View looking east from the junction of the North Downs Way with Bush Road...

As above, with VF's proposed sheds...

However, "permitted development" only allows the building of one such shed every two years. If they stick to their plans (and the law doesn't change), it'll take them nearly 20 years to get what they want...

The Bush Road houses that are threatened by the VF sheds...

Vineyard Farms have six weeks to lodge a High Court appeal against the Planning Inspectorate's refusal. That expires on September 5th. It could take up to 18 months for the appeal to be heard, and then up to another year to hold a second inquiry and reassess the application. And the chances of success are not high - only about 35% of planning appeals that get to the High Court are successful. Only about 1 in 200 complainants actually bother....

...and all the while, the precious grapes need harvesting and processing...

I don't seriously think VF will go for the "full set of sheds" option. I believe they are too hubristic to back down, and that they will appeal against the Planning Inspector's refusal of their vainglorious palace. And if that fails, we will see a cut-down version of the Foster design for Barrow Hill put forward, something that may satisfy the objections of the Inspector.

VF are too in love with their dreams to ever let go...

Common Blue butterflies in Pig Field (female on the right)....

David 2, Goliath 0...

News reaches us that as a result of the Planning Inquiry held in March this year, the Planning Inspectorate has decided to reject the Vineyard Farms appeal against the decision made by Medway Council's Planning Committee in March 2022, to turn down the vainglorious plans for a monstrous Lord Foster monument and vinicultural theme park centre for the green belt area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) that is Upper Bush.

The full text of the appeal decision can be found here.

However, I would be very surprised if this is the end of it. 

Vineyard Farms have very deep pockets (or at least, their billionaire owner does) and an unquenchable hubris. Their only legal recourse in the face of this latest rejection of their plans will be an appeal to the High Court. The basis of such an appeal will need to be that the Planning Inspector has "erred in law": his decision cannot be directly challenged, but the process by which it was reached can be. If successful, the appeal will have to be reheard by a different inspector, avoiding the legal error made by their predecessor. 

The Vineyard Farms team were not at all impressed with the inspector's decision to widen the scope of the inquiry to include Green Belt issues, something which they and their supporters at Medway Council had wanted to avoid. On the opening day of the inquiry, there were dark mutterings about that from the Vineyard Farms army of consultants, lawyers and advisors, something that could have won them very few brownie points from the inspector himself.

It is interesting to note that in his decision, Green Belt issues were not considered to be a reason for the rejection of the VF appeal. This, in effect, is a big win for them. It means that the rather ludicrous "Millington precedent" (which in law means that VF's vainglorious massive tourist centre and luxury restaurant can be regarded as an "agricultural building") has been upheld, despite the huge scale of the development.

It will be interesting to see how Vineyard Farms respond in the face of this latest (albeit temporary) setback.

We know they aren't good losers. They have already threatened to build a series of ugly sheds right next to Bush Road, and to bring lots of additional service traffic down Bush Road instead of across their fields if they don't get their winery (see the latter part of this post). They have also threatened to take all of their agricultural wastes out by truck (rather than composting it, like any other farm would) adding to Bush Road traffic. 

The VF "sheds" proposed for Bush Road (picture from VF's "Proof of Evidence" appendices)...

The sheds (that could be built under "permitted development") don't need to be so ugly, nor do they need to be right by Bush Road. And why would they need to operate a shed any differently to the way they would their winery? 

A cynic would say that it really does smack of wanting to punish the local community for having the temerity to fight them - and win. One would hope that Medway's Planning department would moderate all this in any way it could, but they have been overwhelmingly supportive of Vineyard Farms in the past and somehow I cannot see their adulatory stance changing. 

No-one would deny that having planted so many vines in such a hurry, VF now have a pressing (no pun intended) need for manufacturing capacity to process the output - but perhaps a less cocksure company wouldn't have put all of their eggs in a £30m Lord Foster basket upon the presumption that everyone would just bow down to their grandiose plans for Upper Bush. The "ticking clock" is of their own horological design.

So if I was Mr. Mark Dixon (the billionaire owner of Vineyard Farms), I think I'd now be asking a few pointed questions about the approach of my UK management team. 

All they have managed to deliver so far are massive invoices for the army of consultants and lawyers they've employed, all to no avail. They have tried steamrollering the local community twice and both times they have got their arses kicked. What comes across to us locals as a high-handed, dismissive approach clearly isn't working for them.

The Planning Inspector has left the door open for them. He hasn't rejected the basic premise of the winery as "an agricultural building", only the premise that the impact and scale of the original proposal is appropriate for its AONB surroundings. In effect, the planning inspector's ruling has given Vineyard Farms a blueprint: it tells them how they need to tweak their design to get it built in the AONB.  Something else to consider is that Medway Council are also broke: I don't see them having either the resources or the will to contest any further appeals should VF submit revised plans, which are therefore likely to be just waived through as a result. 

It's clear that many of the local Cuxton community don't want the massive Foster flying saucer, for many of the same reasons that the Planning Inspectorate has rejected it. If only Vineyard Farms could swallow their pride...

Contrary to the spiteful and rather nasty closing remarks made by the Vineyard Farms representatives at the public inquiry, the opponents of the Foster-designed winery aren't all short-sighted, unimaginative NIMBYs with a hatred of change. Most of them would actually still like to see Vineyard Farms succeed as a business. But not at any cost.   

An advertising slogan for their "Harlot" brand: the Vineyard Farms philosophy for everything...?

Maybe VF could scale back their grandiose plans and still get a lot of what they need (as against everything they want) without pissing off the locals. Maybe they could do their manufacturing and bottling off-site (thereby solving a lot of the traffic concerns) but still have a scaled-down tourist centre and wine press nearby that satisfied the AONB appearance concerns and didn't involve such massive upheaval. Maybe they don't need all of the glamping tents, petting zoos and second/third/fourth phase tourist development plans that they so obviously aspire to. 

Maybe they could try being friendly, communicative, supportive and honest with the local Cuxton community (and especially their long-suffering neighbours at Upper Bush) and look to build a winery that was first and foremost a local asset with local involvement and local support, and then see how it went from there. 

I'm not holding my breath on that lot, however. I can't see Vineyard Farms changing their style or their aspirations somehow, unless the management team changes.   

So will Mr Sasha White KC (the formidable top brief who headed up the VF appeal team) wind up representing Vineyard Farms at a High Court appeal? I certainly can't see Vineyard Farms backing off or backing down. Ever. 

We shall see. They have six weeks to lodge an appeal.

Thumbs Down...

"How many more awkward bloody peasants have I got to fight...?"

I expect that Vineyard Farms bosses are a bit fed up at the moment.

Despite the extensive and bedazzling layers of gloss and glitter provided by their expensive designers, Foster & Partners….

…despite their employment of hordes of well-paid experts and consultants…

…despite all of the spin and propaganda about the “enhancements” and benefits that the Kentish Wine Vault would bring to Medway, the locality, and the green belt/AONB that it was to be built upon…

…and despite (most importantly of all) having the support and advocacy of Medway Council’s planning officers…

…the elected councillors who sit on Medway’s Planning Committee voted (by 8 votes to 5 - with one abstention) to reject the Vineyard Farms proposals for the building of the Kentish Wine Vault on the green belt land and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that is Bush Valley at Upper Bush, Cuxton.

So now what?

Naturally, I was interested in Vineyard Farms’ reaction to this latest set-back to their plans. True to form, local click-bait “news” site, KentOnLine, only gave us half the story, one that certainly didn’t tell us about the applicant’s views on the decision.

The view of Barrow Hill you NEVER see in the media - they prefer the ones with Lord Foster's Xanadu in it...

Fortunately, the on-line Architect’s Journal had written quite a decent news article, one which included a quote from Vineyard Farms CEO, Gary Smith, who said (in an admittedly anodyne fashion):

“We are of course disappointed that Medway Council has rejected our plans for a new world-class winery. As an agricultural business, we have a clear need for a new winemaking facility. We will now take time to review all planning options available to us as we consider our next steps,” …

One would like to think that those “next steps” would involve perhaps backing off a bit and compromising. 

As Councillor Matt Fearn stated in his address to the committee (and if the Council’s planning portal is anything to go by), Medway’s residents are 3 to 1 against the winery, while Cuxton residents are 15 to 1 against it.  

It’s clear that the vast majority of people, near and far, don’t want your unnecessary, vainglorious Kentish Wine Vault, Vineyard Farms. They’d rather our green belt/ANOB at Upper Bush was left alone, thank you. That must surely have dawned upon you by now.

Nevertheless, I suspect Vineyard Farms will probably want to persist with the fragile assertion that their restaurant, café, wine bar and visitor’s centre with their wine plant in the basement is really only an “agricultural building” and one which just HAS to built on Upper Bush because of the even more fragile assertion that the quality of the wine would suffer if the precious grapes were to be transported, even just a few miles away, to an off-site winery.

Rather than back off, Vineyard Farms will probably appeal against the decision of the planning committee's councillors, which will result in a Public Inquiry. 

It seems somewhat odd that in a so-called democracy, a private company can appeal to central government in order to overturn a majority decision made by democratically-elected local councillors, and seek to impose its unpopular and profit-driven, selfish plans upon local people.  

You'd like to think that Vineyard Farms would ask itself if that is a route it really wants to go down. Appealing against the council's decision would be a public relations disaster, at least locally.  

It would show a sorry lack of corporate self-awareness. It would show that it couldn't care less about the opinions of its neighbours and its elected representatives. 

But I guess Vineyard Farms aren't that bothered. They have a mega-rich owner and their eye on the long game, with national and multi-national aspirations. They're not too worried about a few local peasants and their plebeian representatives. They know everything will be forgotten once the concrete starts pouring anyway. At four times the acreage, it's an ultra-Denbies I suspect they really wish to build, with the 350,000+ visitors a year and the hotels, conference centres and corporate hospitality facilities to go with them.  This is just the first phase, the thin end of a very thick wedge.

Normally a public inquiry would be held in front of a government planning inspector, but given the development in question's £30m price tag, the final decision is likely to go all the way up to the Secretary of State for Housing etc. etc., Michael Gove.

This, of course, would have been the result had the planning committee approved the plans anyway, which is why the protesters are not celebrating the result of Wednesday’s planning meeting as a victory. They know the real decision has yet to be made.

The video of the March 9^th planning committee meeting leading to the rejection of the VF plans is attached below: (Update: this video has since been taken down, presumably by the council).

From my unimportant perspective, I was reasonably impressed with the planning committee’s discussions as compared to last November’s effort. The councillors who spoke were, for the most part, knowledgeable and much better informed. Even Dave Harris, whilst he still came across as all in favour of the application, wasn’t as openly biased as he was last time. He did actually refer to some of the scheme’s critics and their arguments and it was, I felt, a balanced and fair performance from him, given his recommendation to approve.

Even the councillors in favour of the development made some good points, although their supposedly first-hand observations about the traffic in Bush Road were quite laughably false. There was also the argument that, well, we’ve got lots of countryside, so who’s going miss the little bit at Upper Bush?

I won’t even comment on that.

There was an awful lot of discussion about the traffic in Bush Road. It seems that the somewhat contrived nature of the Vineyard Farms-sponsored traffic survey still hasn’t been called out. I have no doubt that the HGV movements to and from the site of the KWV will cause chaos in Cuxton, but to be honest, I think that the additional tourist traffic won’t make a lot of difference if it is out of school hours. There are already too many cars going up and down Bush Road. Will a few more really matter?

If (or more likely, when) Vineyard Farms decide to go down the appeals route, then the following factors need to be considered.

First and foremost, I just can’t see Medway Council's planners working too hard to get a rejection of the plans that they have so vigorously championed. There are some very senior people in Medway Council who want the KWV to happen, even if the populace and their elected representatives don’t.

Secondly, the grounds for rejecting the application need to be absolutely crystal clear. It all seemed a little bit emotional and woolly on Wednesday night. I am not 100% sure that the traffic argument will cut it, mostly because the questionable data from the original traffic survey is too embedded to be discarded. Medway's traffic experts are saying that the data (good or bad) is telling them that the additional physical risk posed by the development-related traffic will not be significant. That opinion will be the one listened to by a planning inspector at a public inquiry.

Another day, another Vineyard Farms delivery.  But enough cause to reject their plans?

Update:

In their formal rejection notice of the Vineyard Farms plans, Medway Council have once more rolled the dice in VF’s favour. Their stated reasons given for rejection were:

“The scale and nature of the proposed development would result in a significant increase in additional activity within the Bush Valley, which would constitute a severe adverse impact and a direct loss of the currently undeveloped tranquillity and wildness of the AONB. It would also lead to the erosion of the rural character and uniqueness of the community of the Upper Bush Conservation Area and the wider Parish of Cuxton, contrary to Policies BNE12, BNE14, and BNE32 of the Medway Local Plan 2003 and paragraphs 177, 197 and 201 of the National Planning Policy Framework 2021…”

No mention whatsoever of the protection of Green Belt land. No mention of the impact of traffic upon Cuxton and Bush Road. Both were heavily debated at the planning meeting, and yet neither argument made it as a formal reason for refusal of planning permission. 

Even now, it appears that Medway Council want to push the Vineyard Farms proposals through the public inquiry. By omitting any reference to the most powerful cases against VF plans, they have strengthened VF’s hand and severely weakened that of the objectors.

To me, the key argument is the “inappropriate” nature of the development. By framing the debate around the AONB and conservation area considerations only, Medway Council have ensured that the much more powerful arguments around NPPF protections for green belt won't get prominence in any Public Inquiry.

I have no doubt that Vineyard Farms, with their virtually infinite financial resources provided by their billionaire tax-exile owner, will be looking to field a team of highly expensive legal advisors at the public inquiry. Given the likely costs, Medway Council can't just roll over, and will have put up a bit of a token fight to avoid a hefty costs award and so will have to do the same. 

Opponents of the scheme simply cannot afford the same scale of legal representation, which would be the only way to ensure that green belt protection arguments could be properly presented at a public inquiry. And given the likely magnitude of costs, could they afford to lose? 

Of course not. They have been effectively silenced by the size of VF's chequebook and Medway Council. 

To reiterate ad-nauseum, Paragraphs 147-149 of the National Planning Policy Framework state that:

147. Inappropriate development is, by definition, harmful to the Green Belt and should not be approved except in very special circumstances.

148. 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.

149. A local planning authority should regard the construction of new buildings as inappropriate in the Green Belt.

Vineyard Farms have been pushing the line that their restaurant complex is an “agricultural building” because a stated exception to paragraph 149 is “buildings for agriculture”.

They claim that as 92% of the KWV’s floor area is given over to wine manufacturing, the whole building must be an agricultural one. This is a nonsensical, "the biggest bit defines the whole" piece-of-shite argument. For example, 92% of a human’s DNA is identical to that of a monkey...

Danger! Vineyard Farms/Foster & Partners logic at work...

80% of the building’s staff are needed to support the 8% that they say comprises the restaurant etc. That shows you where the emphasis of the operation is.  As does all of the glossy documentation furnished by the building’s designers, Foster and Partners.

They have put forward dubious “legal precedents” to fog the issue and to try and justify the laughable proposition that adding a restaurant, café, wine bar and visitor’s centre tourist attraction to the roof of their wine factory to create the £30m Foster & Partners Xanadu still somehow equates with a cow shed, farm shop or a barn.  These "precedents" have to be looked at in detail and rebuffed.

They claim that they need the KWV to process their wine, but ask them to take out the “touristy” bits and they then claim that such a thing would not meet their business needs, which surely gives the lie to the “agricultural needs” argument.

They refuse to countenance a remote winery on a nearby business park, despite the complete absence of infrastructure in the green field/green belt site they want to build on, such as ease of access, power, water, drainage etc., and even though it would eliminate the need for the commercial traffic needed to deliver bottles and production consumables etc. to pass along little Bush Road. They use a specious “quality” argument to gain-say this obvious alternative to building on a green-belt AONB. 

No reasonable person could possibly think that the KWV is an “appropriate” development for green belt land, let alone a development that represents “very special circumstances”, Foster-built or not.

It is essential that the planning inspector in charge of any inquiry gets to consider these all of these arguments, but by their wording of the formal refusal notice, Medway Council have side-stepped them. 

Vineyard Farms have, in effect, already won.

All we can do is write to the Planning Inspector as "interested parties" and present our arguments as best we can.  

But I don't think anyone will be reading them...

The Fourth Estate...

Local media, especially dear old local click-bait "news" site KentOnLine, have been strangely quiet about the winery lately. It's not as if there is nothing going on, but then it seems that Vineyard Farms haven't quite been getting it all their own way, despite the resources (which includes Medway Council's planning department) at their disposal.

You'd think some of the stories would be worth reporting.

There was the business about Vineyard Farms putting up a national Facebook ad, begging for public backing and encouraging people to fill in a proforma that would be sent to the council as a letter of support. One can't blame them in a way. Before their ad, there were around 300 objections and only about 20 letters of support on the council's planning portal. Despite the propaganda blanket-bombing, it still seems that most people (with the exception of those working in Medway Council's planning department) aren't in favour of letting a billionaire tax exile build a concrete bunker on protected green belt land in a Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB) for (his) pleasure and profit. 

Unfortunately, it seems that someone used the name and address of our local MP, Kelly Tolhurst, to submit a phoney letter of support on her behalf using the Vineyard Farms e-mail template. Kelly wasn't best pleased about that, and wrote to some of her constituents telling them so. It appears she absolutely hates the idea that anyone might think she has an opinion on it. 

Now I hear that the planning department have asked Vineyard Farms to take down their "pleeese vote for us" template, given that it has been proven beyond doubt that fake letters of support can be submitted by its use.

You'd think that a funny little story about "democracy" (and its abuse) like that would be worth reporting, wouldn't you?

Perhaps a local reporter might also wonder about the curious silence of said MP, Kelly Tolhurst, on the issue of the winery development. After all, Kelly was quick to support Hoo villagers in their campaign to prevent the development of the old Deangate Ride golf course, and yet she has tied herself in knots trying to avoid a public stance on the far more damaging development that is the Upper Bush winery.

You'd think a curious local press reporter would want to know why.  

Maybe such a reporter would even go the trouble of finding out what Kelly Tolhurst does for the £15,000's-worth of donations her office received in 2021 from a mysterious association called Businessfore - other than to attend a Christmas party hosted by them at the House of Lords where she had a cosy chat with the bosses of a Businessfore client, a civil engineering contracting company called the VGC Group (check out their Facebook page and put "Tolhurst" in the search bar...).

It's the sort of thing you'd think a keen reporter would be swarming all over.

Especially funny is the protest web page that sprung up as a repost to the VF Facebook advertising campaign. Rather cheekily, the protest group bagged the kentishwinevault.com domain name, which the Vineyard Farms PR team had rather carelessly left unclaimed. Now, if you type "Kentish Wine Vault" into any Microsoft search engine (e.g. Edge or Bing), the first site that comes up is the protest site rather than VF's one for the Kentish Wine Vault (Google is a bit clunky and has some catching up to do, I'm told).  Apparently, ".com" outranks ".co.uk" in search engine preferences (again, so I'm told: IT isn't my "thing") and so the protestors, despite not having zillions of pounds and a PR team to help them, have managed to make Vineyard Farms look a bit silly.

Worth a few tongue-in-cheek lines in the local rag, maybe? Nah. Zip.

Then there's the more serious business of Medway Council pre-empting the result of the scheduled planning committee meeting of March 9th to approve or reject the winery scheme, giving the impression that it is already a done deal.

What faith can anyone have in the planning process when Medway Council boasts that it will “soon be home” to the KWV in its vainglorious bid for city status (see p.16) weeks before the application is actually up for approval?

Extract from Medway Council's 2022 city status bid, p16, published January 2022

This is in addition to Medway Council using Vineyard Farms own propaganda to publicise the development on the council web page. You'd think something like all this would be worth a few lines in the local press, wouldn't you?

But then our "local democracy reporter" (and as a Cuxton lass, she certainly is local) has recently been exercising her own democratic rights, so it seems. Indeed, she has apparently filled in the Vineyard Farms dodgy template and sent in her letter of support for the winery to the council (although with the VF template, who knows if it really was her?). Good for her (if she has). Last time I looked, objections still outnumbered letters of support by three to one, even with Vineyard Farms' Facebook begging letter, so VF need every bit of support they can get. A tame journalist in their camp would be very welcome, I guess. 

Quite what that may do to any pretence of unbiased reporting on the winery development by KOL and its sister "dead-tree" news outlets is open to debate, of course.

"News You Can Trust" says KOL.  Yeah, right...

Update;  Wow, fame at last.  Seems the mighty KentOnline didn't think much of this tiny little mickey-take and have taken a break from attacking Kent's only Labour MP (ironically as a result of a hostile blog post) to turn their guns on little old me instead. They are even accusing me of libel, though I can't quite see what is libellous about anything I've written here. It certainly wasn't the intent. Heavy-handed and not very funny, maybe, but libellous? 

Thanks for the publicity, though. I really am a nobody and it seems kind of pathetic that KOL feel a need to go after a tiny dissenting squeak such as mine. Very few people read what I write but thanks to KOL, maybe they will now. 

This was just a little photo-blog to celebrate local history and wild-life. The advent of the winery and the side-stepping of green belt protections to enable its planning and likely construction has really upset a lot of folks who don't have a voice, so I've tried to use this obscure platform to argue back. Seems some people don't like that. It gets me down that those with power and influence seem to be all in favour of this development, despite it flying in the face of national planning guidelines designed to protect green belt land.

Still, I do owe our local democracy reporter an apology. It seems that she too is indeed a victim of the fake support letter scam I mentioned above (so she says), although I did indicate that I thought that may be the case. 

So I'm sorry if I have impugned the fearless impartiality of our local democracy reporter, and she and her chums at KOL are completely entitled to use their much bigger media reach to have a sneer back at me. 

Fighting Back...

In the face of a tidal wave of slick propaganda from Vineyard Farms (which now includes paid Facebook adverts begging for public support), the determined bunch of activists I have nicknamed "The Cuxton Bush Valley Preservation Society" have struck back with some pretty spiffy material of their own.

Unlike a lot of the Vineyard Farms documentation for their precious Kentish Wine Vault, the content of their new protest web page is grounded in hard facts rather than vague aspirations...

Home page of the new "NOT the Kentish Wine Vault" web-page...

The site can be found at the following addresses:

https://kentishwinevault.com/

and

www.cuxtonagainstwinery.com

Please feel free to circulate them as widely as you can.

The more IT-savvy among you may notice that the protestors have (rather cheekily) bagged the .com domain for the Kentish Wine Vault.  Hopefully, once the search engine stuff gets sorted, it should mean that the site will become the first hit for anyone looking for "Kentish Wine Vault".  That'll be amusing, and only fair.  After all, this is the site that REALLY tells you all about the Kentish Wine Vault development and its true impact.

It's still a work in progress but it needed to be put out quickly, now that Vineyard Farms have upped the ante with their Facebook ads, desperately pleading for members of the public to e-mail them via a proforma, so that they can claim the correspondence as "support" on Medway Council's planning portal.

The protestors have adopted the same tactic, although whether Medway Council will allow the Cuxton Bush Valley Preservation Society to garner support in the same underhanded way that Vineyard Farms are doing will be interesting to see.

The buttons at the bottom of the home page take you to some of the documentation that has been prepared in advance of various meetings taking place over the next few weeks. Whilst Cuxton's elected representatives on the Parish Council are forbidden to take part in these meetings (such is local democracy these days) the protest team have been working hard to ensure that Medway's councillors get to see the other side of the argument to that being espoused by the Vineyard Farms PR team or Medway Council's own planning department.  

They have tried to cut through the "smoke and mirrors" of the thousands of pages of documentation and PR puffs that Vineyard Farms have belched forth in support of their planning application, along with highlighting the objections from professional bodies such as the Kent ANOB team, whose evidence against the winery development has been pretty much buried or airily dismissed.

Of particular note is the excellent "Community Insight" document that will be shortly winging its way in hard copy to Medway's councillors. It presents an excellent summary of the deficiencies of the Vineyard Farms planning application.  At 32 pages, it is not a document for the terminally lazy or the hard-of-thinking, but it is an easy read and has some nice pictures. I challenge anyone with an open mind to read that and then still say that they think the winery development in Bush Valley is a good idea.

There are also links to some questions that really need answering satisfactorily before the development is approved, and also to some additional light reading provided by yours truly (hem hem) in form of links to some of my old blog posts. 

After all, I've been watching Vineyard Farms roll this lot out for three years now, and their apparent contempt for Cuxton and the treatment of the land under their stewardship has managed to turn my initial optimistic support into implacable opposition (not that that counts for much, of course).

Do surf the web page.  I hope you'll find it entertaining and informative.  And watch that space. More stuff will be added I'm sure...

Update: I'm told by the site admin that someone has already tried to hack the web page and take it down, but fortunately its security was well up to resisting the attack.  Seems someone out there doesn't like us...

Dirty Tricks...

The original closing date on Medway Council’s planning portal for to comments on the Vineyard Farms plans to build a luxury restaurant complex on Bush Valley was September 22nd. last year.  At one point, there were over 230 objections and only 15 letters of support for them.

Mysteriously, the portal has been kept open. This seems unusual, to say the least.

Purely coincidentally, I’m sure, Vineyard Farms have recently placed an advert on Facebook, begging for support.

The Facebook ad sends you to their web-page and invites you to fill in a proforma that will e-mail Medway Council with a letter of support “on your behalf”. None of this nonsense having to register with the council web-site or composing your own reasons for supporting the Vineyard Farms scheme: Vineyard Farms will do all that for you. 

How nice of them.

In summary, Medway’s Planning department have, by all appearances, decided to allow a developer more time to try and garner public support for their pet project and are allowing generic e-mailed correspondence sent from said developer to count as “support” for it.

On that basis, perhaps Medway Council will allow the 1,000+ signatures on the Change.orgpetition to count as individual objections to the scheme…(and please sign the petition if you haven't already!).

(Update, February 16th): if, like me, you were thinking that perhaps the Vineyard Farms auto-generated e-mail approach as a way of trying to gather support could be open to abuse, then you'll be amused to hear that none other than our local MP, Kelly Tolhurst, has been writing to people telling them that someone has submitted a fake letter of support for the winery to the council in her name. Kelly is not happy at someone hijacking her name and address, unsurprisingly.

A quick look at the Council portal shows that, yes indeed, Kelly's name and address was used on a Vineyard Farms template in an apparently spurious letter of support.

Perhaps Medway Council should therefore take down ALL of the support letters for the Vineyard Farms proposals received from their Facebook advert template, as the identities of the senders obviously cannot be verified. Anyone with a postal mailing list could start sending in fake letters of support. Maybe we'll even get to see support letters from M. Mouse, D. Duck, T. Tempest or J.T. Kirk on the council's portal...

Unlike Vineyard Farms, I don’t have a slick PR machine backed by a billionaire tax exile to help propagate my view of the world.  Neither do I have the backing of Medway Council's planning department to allow the posting of my own propaganda on Medway council's website - unlike Vineyard Farms. 

If, however, your views on this are similar to mine and you have yet to register a formal objection to the Vineyard Farms scheme with Medway Council, you can click on the link below: 

https://kentishwinevault.com/ 

and then go to the "Submit Your Objection" option on the bottom left-hand corner of the web-page.  It's quick and easy and avoids having to faff about registering on Medway Council's planning portal.

Alternatively, you could:

·           send your objection to planning.representations@medway.gov.uk. (Clicking on the link should start an e-mail in your e-mail account with the address already put in.)

·           call the title of the e-mail: “Objection:  MC/21/2328 - Construction of a winery building on Land South Of Bush Road Near Cuxton, Medway, Kent.”

·           you'll need to include your name and address for the objection to carry any weight.

If you haven’t already, please take the time to e-mail Medway Council with your objection to the plans of Vineyard Farms, as above. 

Big Yellow Taxi...

Many of the Medway councillors who sit on the Planning Committee (and who will be supposedly adjudicating upon the Vineyard Farms application to build an enormous restaurant complex on Green Belt land at Upper Bush) took the trouble today (15th. January) to come and take a look at what our not-so-local billionaire tax exile wants to concrete over.

Getting them here was itself a minor victory for the small group of local activists who have taken the trouble to battle their way through the smokescreen of glossy propaganda that forms the bulk of the Vineyard Farms application.

An unfortunately foggy Saturday morning for Medway's planning committee's visit...

The timing of the council’s visit did not do them any favours. Freezing cold fog in the middle of January hardly showed Bush Valley at its beautiful best, but nevertheless the councillors came along and squelched around in the fog and the mud on Barrow Hill, and hopefully got a feel for the peace and quiet of the place.

...if only they'd chosen the day before. The view from the bunker spot...

The date of the visit was well-known in advance and the protestors decided to put up a few placards along the route into Cuxton along Bush Road from the A228 and around Upper Bush for our visitors to maybe look at.  Needless to say, our brave councillors drove in from the Cobham end, although they did drive out along Bush Road so the posters weren’t a complete waste of time from that perspective. 

Some of the protest posters put up at Upper Bush....

Despite misgivings from the local Parish Council, a few people also arranged to park their cars up along Bush Road, just to show our visitors how tricky the road can be to negotiate when cars get parked up as they do at school run times.

As protests go, it was all pretty mild. Nobody was gluing themselves to anything and nobody was chanting silly slogans or shouting abuse (except for one demented, angry, mud-splattered Catweasel look-alike on a mountain bike who cycled past a small group of bemused residents at Upper Bush, shouting foul-mouthed oaths at them and spitting on parked cars as he went by).

Posters on Bush Road...

I walked through Upper Bush and down Bush Road that Saturday morning, and I didn’t think it looked as bad in terms of parked cars as it does on a typical school run time. Indeed, I’d say there was less selfish and inconsiderate parking than usual.

That evening, I’d thought I’d visit the Cuxton Village Facebook page, just to see how this little protest had been received. 

By and large, most people seemed pretty supportive.

There were a few inexplicably irascible people on there, however, who tried to give the impression that a thousand “Insulate Britain” protestors had descended on Cuxton village, gluing themselves to the road, manning barricades, throwing firebombs, blockading ambulances and fire-engines, bringing (non-existent) public transport to a grid-locked halt and causing mayhem, disruption and destruction on a massive scale. Some took to naming individuals who had left their cars in the road rather than parking on their own drives (heinous crime!) thus ensuring that they received lots of unpleasant personal on-line abuse from their perennially angry Facebook chums.

Posters on Bush Road...

Of course, none of them would have been saying anything about “selfish, inconsiderate protest parking” if they hadn’t known there was a bit of a “protest” going on in the first place. They wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual at all. The road was certainly no worse than at school run time, but that didn’t stop them using it as an excuse to sneer at and abuse those who are trying to stop Joni Mitchell’s dystopian ballad from coming true for Cuxton.

It seems to me that all of the anger about the winery actually lies with those who are in favour of it.  Most local people who object to it are upset by it and are determined to try and stop it, but they are not angry about it as such. 

Instead, its local proponents are the angry ones; angry, it seems, at anyone who disagrees with them. They are the ones coming out with the insults and the sneers, the accusations of NIMBYism and (oblivious of the irony) moaning that people are always moaning about something. When you try and engage them on the scheme’s drawbacks, they just (angrily) repeat what they seem to have read in the Vineyards Farms leaflet.

The protesters, by contrast, seem quite polite and tolerant of views other than their own and certainly aren’t going around throwing sneering insults at those who think that the winery is going to be the shiny, eco-friendly, local-job-creating glory that Vineyard Farms say it will be.

It made me realise just how effective the “divide and conquer” aspect of the Vineyard Farms propaganda has been. 

Our sunlit uplands: soon to be lost to paying customers of Vineyard Farms...

It seems that some local people don’t care about the wider implications of giving permission to build a development such as the winery on green belt land. The irreplaceable sacrifice of over a thousand acres of beautiful, peaceful green belt farmland to the profit-driven aims of a private company and the whims of its billionaire tax-exile boss are not that important to them.

It’s “good for jobs”, isn’t it? Maybe their fizzy wine will be cheap. And it’ll be somewhere nice to go and have a nice meal now and then, won't it? How dare a bunch of moaning NIMBY protesters try to stop that from happening?

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone.

Big Yellow Taxi for Cuxton’s local winery supporters, please...