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.

Hello and Welcome...

What we will be losing if Vineyard Farms get their way: Barrow Hill, July 2021...

Hello. I’m guessing the probable reason you are reading this right now is that the Kentish Wine Vault protest web-site home page has sent you here.

I’m very proud that the protest group has decided that some of my output on this topic is worth reading. I’m also proud to have contributed to some of the other documents referenced on the home page.

I love the local area of Cuxton and Halling, its countryside, its wildlife and its history.  I think my little blog, which I’ve kept for the past five years or so, will give you a flavour of the beauty and tranquillity of the place.

Silver-Washed Fritillary, Bushy Wood, just to the south of the land Vineyard Farms want to build on...

It’s one of the few areas of Medway to have avoided the concrete hammer of greedy developers. Indeed, less than 5% of Medway is designated as “green belt” land. Bush Valley and its surrounding ancient woodlands are also classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which indeed they are.

This is a crowded part of the world. We need unspoiled areas like this where we can get away from each other and enjoy the simple pleasure of walking in quiet countryside.

What Luddesdown valley used to look like before the vineyard...

The recent Coronavirus lock-downs showed the value of such places. They help keep us sane.

So I am saddened and upset that Medway Council’s Planning department have decided to give the green light to Vineyard Farms for this development, to be sited on Barrow Hill overlooking Upper Bush.  Fortunately, the final decision still gets to be made by the council's planning committee on March 9th.

I have been following the impact of Vineyard Farms upon the local environment for the past three years and it makes grim reading if, like me, you love the land and its wildlife.

Here are links to the story as it has evolved so far:

It all started when Vineyard Farms Ltd. first bought Court and Brookers Farm in 2019. I wrote about my first impressions of that…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-grapes-of-wealth.html

Luddesdown valley, late evening, February 2019...

Very soon after, we began to get a taste of things to come. First, there was the brutal coppicing of local SSSI woodland…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2019/04/stonyfield-wood.html

Coppicing or clearance...?

…and the scouring of hundreds of acres of formerly fertile arable farmland, the ploughing up of ancient footpaths and the crude flailing of associated hedgerows…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2019/04/holly-hill-to-luddesdowne-moonscape.html

Vineyard Farms treatment of Luddesdown valley, Spring 2019...

There was a brief respite, where the wildlife returned for one last showing…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2019/10/an-organic-interlude.html

A last farewell...

…but the “weeds” were soon grubbed up and next spring, the valley assumed a forlorn, silent and neglected appearance…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2020/06/luddesdown-vineyard.html

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/05/to-luddesdown.html

Bare soil still visible after two years...

Then I heard that Vineyard Farms (owned by Mark Dixon, off-shore billionaire tax exile and hobby-farmer-cum-land speculator) had bought Bush Farm at Cuxton as well. He wasted no time, promptly churning that up as well, though at first not as destructively as at Luddesdown…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2020/05/vines-and-vandalism.html

Bush Valley gets the Vineyard Farms makeover...

I thought perhaps they had learned their lesson at Luddesdown, but then I began to suspect that bigger plans were afoot…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/04/something-wicked-this-way-comes.html

Soil sampling on Barrow Hill, pre-construction...

Sure enough, all soon became clear…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-grapes-of-wealth-revisited.html

Mark Dixon, the owner of Vineyard Farms, puts his spell on Medway Council's Planning Department...

Then we finally got to see the plans. Beneath the glossy “ooh, look, it’s Lord Foster, isn't it all wonderful?” propaganda, the desperate “smoke-and-mirrors” nature of them was all too apparent. Most striking was the outrageous pretence that a £30m restaurant, wine bar, visitors centre (with a wine factory almost incidentally tucked away in the basement) could be called an "agricultural building" (just like, say, a barn or a cow shed) so that planning prohibitions of such developments on green-belt land could be side-stepped…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/09/reasons-to-be-objectionable-part-1.html

Just another £30m farm shop, just like wot you'd get on any farm, honest guv'nor...

We read about traffic “surveys” related to the development that just happened to be sited such that they wouldn’t actually detect any traffic…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/09/reasons-to-be-objectionable-part-2.html

Another day, another lorry trying to find its way to the vineyard along Bush Road...

…not forgetting the “ecological survey” that, strangely, couldn’t find any wildlife…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/09/reasons-to-be-objectionable-part-3.html

The rare moth that inhabits nearby SSSI woodland.  Present on the development site?  We don't know 'cos they didn't look...

…and the other insubstantial and vague “smoke and mirrors” promises, not least about the supposed creation of a few local jobs that hardly justify the huge damage the development will do to one of the last bits of Medway’s open countryside, let alone the precedent it will set for green belt land across the UK.

I thought it was a pretty shoddy submission, to be honest. So, thankfully, did Medway Council’s planning committee, who deferred the decision, pending a site visit…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/12/medway-council-planning-meeting-winery.html

At the meeting, it became pretty apparent that Medway Council’s Planning department were enthusiastic supporters of the Vineyard Farms scheme. Other aspects of the plans raised at the meeting also warranted further scrutiny…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/12/vineyard-farms-raising-stink.html

Smelling a rat with Vineyard Farms "green energy" plans?  Or worse...?

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-white-christmas.html

Vineyard Farms massive hole in the ground. But what happens to the rubble...?

All credit to the councillors on Medway Council’s planning committee, though. Most of them made the effort to come out to Upper Bush to see what they were being asked to approval the destruction of, although the weather did no-one any favours…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2022/01/big-yellow-taxi.html

...if only our councillors had come to Barrow Hill a day earlier...

…and now that the date of March 9^th has been set for the final Planning Committee meeting that will decide upon approval or rejection of their schemes, the Vineyard Farms PR machine has gone up a gear…

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2022/02/dirty-tricks.html

Vineyard Farms begging for support on Facebook.  Saturation or desperation...?

…hence our decision to try and raise our game a bit, although we don’t have the backing of a billionaire tax exile, his corporate business machine and an army of PR wallahs to help get our message out there.

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2022/02/fighting-back.html

Despite all of the efforts made by Vineyard Farms to promote their schemes, and despite having the advocacy of Medway Council's own planning department, it was comprehensively rejected by Medway Council's Planning Committee in March.

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2022/03/thumbs-down.html

Unfortunately, it seems that despite its schemes being clearly unwanted by Medway residents and their elected representatives, Vineyard Farms are intending to appeal against the decision at a Public Inquiry - so watch this space.

Please note the opinions you see expressed here are mine alone, and are not always in agreement with those of other protestors. Like any group of people, we have disagreements about approaches, but we usually come to reach good compromises without the need to get annoyed with each other – curiously unlike those who say (loudly and aggressively) that they are in favour of the winery and who seem to get irrationally angry with anyone who thinks that the Vineyard Farms promised Nirvana isn’t as wonderful as they say it is.

We’re not NIMBYs. We want Vineyard Farms’s wine-making business to succeed. 

Honestly.

But not at any cost.

Finally, here’s a little bit on the historic and peaceful little hamlet of Upper Bush.  It’s supposedly a conservation area but it’s only a few hundred yards or so away from where Vineyard Farms want to build their massive concrete bunker.  It would be a crime if those lovely cottages and their residents were forced to exist in a goldfish bowl as a little side-show for the 70,000 + tourists a year who will form Vineyard Farms’ paying customers, with the area becoming an overflow car-park for them.

https://hallingviews.blogspot.com/2018/10/upper-bush.html

The Old Bakery, Upper Bush...

So thanks for coming here. 

I hope you’ll understand why this development needs to be stopped, not just for local reasons, but for the protection of our green belt land and our wild places everywhere across the UK.

One one final note, I'd like to quote our local historian, the late Derek Church. In the mid 1960's, Upper Bush lost many of its historic cottages thanks to the ignorance of Strood municipal council, the then local authority. Reflecting on that grievous loss in his 1976 book "Cuxton - A Kentish Village" he wrote:

"I cannot begin to imagine what goes through the minds of councillors who can destroy such a place of beauty..." 

Let us hope that, at the planning meeting on March 9th, there are enough councillors with a conscience present so that we do not have to ask ourselves such a question again... 

Surely Not...?

It seems that a new traffic survey was been set up along Bush Road in Cuxton on the 9th. February. Survey cameras have been mounted opposite the junction with the A229 and also by the Cuxton football club pitch.

Traffic survey cameras at Bush Road (by football pitch and by junction with A228)

Almost needless to say, it is half term this week. There will be no school run traffic to measure. The second data point by the social club is also to the west of the school, the club entrance and the shops where most of the Bush Road traffic goes to and from.  In comparison, much less traffic passes by the football field. Measuring traffic flows past the social club would be totally unrepresentative of those at the residential end of Bush Road.

The proposed new winery at Bush Valley has highlighted all of the problems of traffic through the eastern end of Bush Road, which are concentrated in the stretch of road from the junction with the busy A228 through to where Cuxton primary school is. This is, of course, particularly noticeable at school run time, where a combination of sheer vehicles numbers and the narrow nature of the road (plus a smattering of selfish and inconsiderate parking by the “I can do wot I like” contingent) can make negotiating the eastern part of Bush Road a slow, frustrating and frequently hazardous business.

Bush Road is the main arterial route used to gain access to most of the residential areas in Cuxton village. If you live in the main village and have to drive to and from your house, then you’ll have to use Bush Road. 

Vineyard Farms have always been well aware that any access along Bush Road to their proposed new massive luxury restaurant, wine bar and visitors centre will add more traffic to the already overburdened main access road into Cuxton.

They know that their desire to funnel at least 70,000 tourists a year (and probably many more) plus all of the HGV winery construction and subsequent operational traffic down little Bush Road, past people’s houses, the access to the GP surgery, the shops, the library and the busy, busy school, will worsen what is already a traffic nightmare and will cause huge damage to the quality of life of Cuxton residents.

Right back in 2019 in their early planning exercise, Vineyard Farms knew that Bush Road traffic would most probably be the reason that their planning application would flounder.

So they commissioned a traffic survey, which (lo and behold) gave them answers they liked and furnished them with some favourable data to show Medway’s Planning department that traffic wasn’t an issue in Bush Road. Once the report was published, it became obvious that the data had been collected (by accident or design) from a totally unrepresentative point along Bush Road (by Tomlins Lane), well to the west of the shops and the school where most of the congestion occurs. The survey timing also missed out a lot of the actual school run period.

The poor quality of that survey has been discussed elsewhere.

Despite both Medway Council and Vineyard Farms insisting that there is no real traffic problem in Bush Road as a result of that joke survey, public awareness of the laughable nature of it has become quite high. 

Cuxton Parish Council even commissioned its own survey, which showed west-bound traffic flow into the village to be FOUR TIMES higher at peak times than the “data” gathered by Vineyard Farms’ pet consultants, Meyer Brown.

Parish Council traffic data for Bush Road; 500 cars per hour at peak times!

As it turned out, the first planning meeting told Vineyard Farms to go away and sort out their act, much to the chagrin of both them and Medway’s Planning department, the latter of whom proved themselves at the meeting to be enthusiastic supporters of Lord Foster’s vainglorious Xanadu. 

We know that Medway Council’s planning department are working hand-in-hand with Vineyard Farms. They have even been parroting Vineyard Farms unbelievably self-serving propaganda on the council webpage, saying:

“The proposal would bring significant economic and social benefits both locally and nationally. This would be through the creation of jobs and additional spend in the local area through linked trips and associated tourism as well as providing apprenticeship and educational opportunities.”

“Given the benefits identified above, along with the proposed mitigation measures, the proposed development would result in a sustainable form of development that would outweigh any residual harm and as such planning permission should be granted.”

But somehow, I just can’t believe that Vineyard Farms or Medway Council’s Planning department are behind this latest traffic survey.

After their last debacle, surely they would want to gather data from a time and place that was as representative as possible? Surely they learned their lesson from last time?

Who could possibly want to gather data that almost deliberately seems to want to hugely underestimate traffic along Bush Road, I wonder? 

Why would they want to conduct a survey that (once again) is timed and positioned to miss school run journeys, as well as all of the residential traffic into the village from that comes down from James Road.

Why would they want to disguise the underlying traffic safety risks? What use would that be?

Let’s wait and see… 

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...

Vogons, Cuxton, and the Dying Art of Protest...

The BBC's Vogon...

Anyone over the age of fifty may remember the 1970’s BBC Radio Series, “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, written by Douglas Adams. It was subsequently transferred to a novel and a BBC TV series (the latter notable for its truly awful special effects, which were often as funny as the dialogue).

In the series, Planet Earth was destroyed to make way for a “galactic hyperspace route” by a race of galactic bureaucrats called the Vogons. Vogons weren’t actually evil, just completely unthinking and stubbornly single-minded. They had an interesting attitude to things of natural beauty…

“(The evolutionary forces of the Vogon’s home planet) brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall aspiring trees of breathtaking slenderness and colour, which the Vogons cut down and burnt the crab meat with; elegant, gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes, which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would instantly snap, but the Vogons sat on them anyway…”

Vineyard Farms seem to me to be a little like the Vogons: both plan to destroy local people’s quality of life to build something that isn’t really necessary, and both have a disregard for things of peace and beauty (just look at the deep-ploughed desolation of the local valleys now, the ugliness of the wires and stakes, the air of weed-strewn neglect and the trashed hedgerows around Luddesdown).

Unsurprisingly the precious little vines, planted in such a hurry and over such a huge area, aren't doing too well. Harvesting in 2022 was the original boast: that now appears highly unlikely and is being quietly forgotten, it seems. Indeed, 2024 is being bandied about as a date for full production instead.  Catch 22?  

The Vogon guard in the story had quite a good slogan as well: “Resistance Is Useless!!” it bellowed. 

Maybe VF should adopt that as their public relations policy.

Municipal councils have a long history of treating little Cuxton with contempt, unfortunately. In the sixties, the village lost many fine old historic buildings that could and should have been preserved (such as the cottages in Upper Bush, Old Post Office Row and the Rectory).

Just afterwards, a local historian wrote...

"I cannot begin to imagine what goes through the minds of councillors who can destroy such a place of beauty...": Derek Church, Cuxton - A Kentish Village, 1976.

We are still trying to imagine that today, it seems.  Even worse was to come. 

"We Have To Trash Your Countryside 'Cos We Need The Jobs, Right...?" Sounds familiar...

In the mid-1980s, the Blue Circle cement company hatched a scheme to quarry the chalk in Dean Valley. Cuxton village was horrified. Surely that beautiful valley couldn’t just simply be destroyed on the whim of a rich company like Blue Circle?

Public meetings were held. Protests were made.

"Keep Dean Green" protestors...

"Keep Dean Green" protest against Blue Circle's Dean Valley chalk extraction plans...

None of it made the slightest difference. Blue Circle trashed the western end of Dean Valley anyway...

Chalk extraction, Dean Valley 1989...

Chalk extraction, Dean Valley, 1989...

Many factors stepped in to stop the damage to Dean Valley being terminal. Following the energy crisis of the seventies, the eighties saw great consolidation in the cement industry as overseas products began to compete. Many quarries simply ran out of raw material as land became increasingly scarce, and the industry contracted.

Local historian Derek's Church's impression of what Dean Valley would have looked like had chalk extraction continued..

Dean Valley itself did not furnish the quality or quantity of chalk required and activities ceased inside a year or so. The Halling (Rugby) works subsequently closed in 2000, with operations completely ceasing in 2009 and the site demolished in 2010.

The top-soil in Dean Valley was put back and now it is pretty hard to imagine the western end of the valley as it was briefly in the late eighties/early nineties. The pond, which marks the tunnel entrance though the hill to take the chalk to the Halling works, is the only feature left reminding us of those days.

The western end of Dean Valley today...

For Dean Valley, time and economics achieved what protests could not. It would be nice to think that justice would be served on Vineyard Farms in such a fashion, should their schemes come to fruition. Climate change, consumer fashion, economics and even central government policy on land use. VF are at the mercy of all of them. Who knows what the future will bring?

Dean Farm today: Vineyard Farms attempts to buy this have so far been rebuffed - for now...

These days, the banner-waving and slogan-shouting type of protesting is just as ineffective as it was in the eighties, is socially unacceptable (thanks to the antics of idiots like Insulate Britain) and is so much harder to actually do. Covid has restricted gatherings of people and new Tory legislation (the soon-to-be-approved Police, Crimes and Sentencing Bill) makes protesting virtually illegal anyway. A protest along the lines of the Dean Valley one could soon see you jailed for up to 51 weeks!

And people are too busy and have too many distractions these days, anyway. Many people struggle to even eat and heat, let alone worry about their local environment.  Which is right where our rulers want us serfs to be, I suspect...

The principle that green belt land should not be built upon and the damage the project will inflict upon the quality of life in poor little Cuxton doesn’t feature  anywhere. 

Anyone who objects to Vineyard Farms’ schemes is painted as a NIMBY, a tree hugger or a “fluffy hand-wringer”, even by some people who live in Cuxton, such has been the effectiveness of VF’s propaganda. “Divide and conquer” indeed.

Vineyard Farms have a monopoly on Medway Council's time - certainly our Parish Council have had no opportunity to present Cuxton's case to the Council Planning committee in the same way that Vineyard Farms can present theirs. The Council Planning department has simply ignored the arguments laid out in the 200+ objections they have received against the scheme.

The Vineyard Farms PR machine has a good grip on things and they have pretty much ensured that their agenda is the only one being heard.  “Look at our wonderful design, and how beautifully it fits into the green belt around it” goes the story. The local media certainly parrots that view, and most people outside of Cuxton (especially Medway's Planning department) seem to welcome the idea of the winery.  

The Planning Committee meeting of December 8th (and the video thereof) showed that bias quite clearly. Just watch it. It is rather shocking in terms of its one-sidedness. 

Explanations about the "exceptional circumstances" and "public interest" that would satisfy national planning guidelines for allowing development within green belt areas were scarce. Councillor Matt Fearn was given only five minutes to present this counterpoint on our behalf, to Dave Harris's thirty minutes of pro-winery cheerleading.

Both our own Parish Council and Kent ANOB have explained, clearly, concisely and unequivocally, why the winery should not be built. Those documents were mysteriously omitted from the Supplementary Notes given to the planning committee members prior to the planning meeting.

Watch this space...