THE farmer at the centre of a long-running dispute over whether a new house can be built on land near Rame Head has lodged an appeal against the latest decision by Cornwall Council planners.

Chris Wilton’s application for an agricultural worker’s house first went before the East Planning committee in August 2020. At that point, his plans for a four-bedroom detached house with garage were approved.

A campaign to reverse the decision ensued: a judicial review was mounted, and this succeeded in quashing the local authority’s decision.

High Court judge Justice Tipples said that Cornwall Council’s committee had failed to set out the reasons for their decision, which went contrary to the recommendation of the planning officer, and that the committee had not correctly interpreted local planning policy, a verdict which left the local authority liable for some £35,000 in legal fees.

The judge wrote that establishing an ‘essential need’ for a development did not in itself justify development in the AONB.

When the planning committee met once more to assess the application again in July 2021, the plans were rejected in a close vote, on the grounds that the building would cause harm to the landscape of the AONB, and that the scheme would be contrary to various local and national planning policies.

Now, Mr Wilton has appealed against this decision, and has submitted a raft of both new and previously seen documents in support of his case. These include a statement from the applicant, photographs, documents from bodies such as English Nature, and details of other agricultural workers’ and other dwellings that have been won on appeal.

In his statement, Mr Wilton restates his argument that he needs to live close to the headland in order to monitor the ponies that graze the land: if he lives further away, he says, the ponies will be removed, and the land will quickly be lost to fern and gorse and ‘lose its Special Site of Scientific Interest designation within around a decade’.

Rame Head is a part of the Mount Edgcumbe Country Park which is jointly owned by Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council.