Alpaca farmer loses battle to save cabin
AN ALPACA farmer has lost his battle to keep a building for wool production as no such activity has taken place there for a decade.
John Bate, 63, has around 30 of the animals for breeding at Mottram Wood Farm, in Mottram St Andrew, and also harvests their wool.
He wants to use a cabin building at the farm for the processing of it – which involves scouring, dying, drying and carding – before selling the produce.
But it does not have planning permission and is in the green belt.
An application to retain the building for holiday accommodation was turned down by Cheshire East Council in 2015 and an order made for it to be demolished.
And planners say Mr Bate’s latest application for wool production is merely an attempt to ‘retrofit’ a residential building to another purpose so it does not have to be knocked down.
Currently the wool is stored in the same building as alpacas themselves and because there has never been any processing on site a 10-year stock, weighing 1,000kg, has built up.
A report by council planner Adam Barnes said: “The structure that exists at the moment is unlawful, in breach of an enforcement notice.
”The design of the building for Alpaca wool processing has not been designed around that process but [the application] seeks to retrofit the use within the layout of the existing residential.
”There is mention of the machinery required to undertake the wool processing but there is no indication as to how this would sit practically within the building.
”The cabin has been designed and constructed for a residential use not as an Alpaca wool processing facility.”
In refusing Mr Bate’s application the council ruled that for the building to be retained in the green belt ‘special circumstance’ must apply.
And while a contribution to the agricultural economy would qualify, there was no evidence of any such activity taking place in the cabin.
Mr Bate says the building with alpacas in, where the wool is currently stored, is unsuitable for processing.
He also argues there are no alternative wool processing facilities in the area close enough to make the business viable.
Consultants Harvey Hughes submitted a report with the application saying: “Currently Mr Bate has been collecting all wool produced from the alpacas for the previous 10 years due to no medium/large scale producers in the surrounding areas having sufficient capacity to process the fibres.
“As such there is now a back log of approximately 1,000kg of alpaca fibre. Due to processing facilities not being available to the business poor prices will be obtained for the wool should Mr Bate look to sell it unprocessed.”