Many thanks for your guidance re use of agricultural land. We live in rural Shropshire and alongside our house and garden is a field owned by a friend and farmer. The strip bordering us has been thick with nettles and brambles for many years and is never cut or treated when cutting the grass for hay. I asked him if I could use a narrow strip to grow vegetables. No problem with him and so we posted it and wired the area to keep it from the occassional horse or cow. I went to the planning office who said that unless anybody complained to go ahead and we had not had the conversation...nod, nod you know what I mean. The first year was great and we had a great crops of everything. Half way through the second year I received a letter from the planning development officer saying that they had received a complaint on the grounds that it was a change of land use... I rang them up and was quite upset with them regarding their stance... They said it could be seen as part of our garden and so in the future could be used for building... I informed them that in no way was the land ours to do that. I only wanted to grow vegetables rather than nettles, and how could the growing of vegetables on agricultural land be a change of land use. After a letter of apology to them regarding my abruptness (having just returned from a very moving funeral which I had conducted) they finally agreed to allow me to see the year out and harvest the crops... It's now a new year and since then a surveyor friend provided me with a legal statement relating to a similar case in which it was stated that as long as the land was not incorporated into you garden, even though it might be adjacent to it, that planning permission is not required... So I am hoping this might change their tune, although I am a little nervous about presenting to them as we are planning to build a small retirement home in our garden and don't want to rock the boat too much... It does seem to be a difficult topic to obtain agreement about, depending on perspective of the planning officer and their legal team who hadn't even heard of the cases which have been passed in favour of such situations... Has anybody else had similar problems which have resulting in a happy end for the vegetable plot... ?
Brian