‘Reduction of high-grade agricultural land’ flagged as more planning applications pour in
An aerial view of the agricultural land at Nantwich which forms the approved outline application site at London Road(Image: Google)
Food security will be under threat if planners and government continue to allow developers to eat up agricultural land for housing, some Cheshire East councillors and residents have warned.
It’s a view which has been expressed at various meetings, as housing applications flood in across the borough for development on agricultural land.
Knutsford councillor Tony Dean (Con) was the latest to voice his concerns at last week’s meeting of the strategic planning board, when members were discussing an application for up to 85 homes on 6.39 hectares of agricultural land off London Road at Nantwich.
As councillors struggled to find a reason to refuse the outline scheme – which eventually was approved – Cllr Dean told the meeting: “One of the things which is not yet considered to have any planning weight, but I’m sure it will do within the next 20 to 30 years, is the reduction of high-grade agricultural land.”
He said that particular Nantwich site was very good agricultural land.
“People will say, well, that’s tiny compared to all the farming land we have in the country, but the problem is, if you keep nibbling away at it, we’re not even self-sufficient in this country as it is, and we’ll get less and less self-sufficient,” said Cllr Dean.
“At the moment, that’s not an issue, but if we have any more issues like the Strait of Hormuz and certain other possible international problems, we could end up like we were in 1939, very short of food in this country.
“I am sure that, at some stage in the government, somebody will see that eating up our agricultural land is the worst thing we could possibly do.”
He said in Cheshire East it was accepted that solar farming and tree planting is not permitted on high-grade agricultural land.
“But houses seem to be the exception, and the planning system has yet to accept that eating away at high-grade agricultural land is the wrong thing,” he said.
Cllr Dean’s comments come a few months after a similar argument was put forward by Knutsford councillor Stewart Gardiner (Con) regarding a proposal for housing and a care home on land off Crewe Road at Sandbach.
Cllr Tony Dean, Knutsford, Conservative(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
That application was refused in October last year by councillors – with one reason being the proposed development would lead to the loss of best and most versatile agricultural land.
The applicant won the subsequent appeal after Cheshire East withdrew its objections.
But at the original October meeting, Cllr Gardiner had argued that that Sandbach land ‘is adding to the food security of this country which is a very significant point and officers, councillors and inspectors and even ministers of the Crown who fail to understand this, fail to understand the importance of food security’.
And at December’s full council meeting, objectors fighting the proposals for the Adlington new town – when it was still one of 12 areas being considered by government – had argued about the need for national food security.
One resident told the meeting: “What this means in practice is that nearly 2,500 acres of highly productive farmland producing 4.5 million litres of milk, more than 3,000 lambs and 115 tonnes of meat products per year, will be lost to urban sprawl.
“The loss of farming communities and the erosion of our national food security will be highly damaging in the long term and once this farmland has gone, it’s gone forever.”
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