Feathers fly over game rearing bid Ministers are asked to rule on pheasant stop notice
enquiries with the council in March 2016 as to the planning requirements in relation to the use of the site.
“[The council’s] Paul Kettles and Andy Baxter visited the appellant at the site on March 16, 2016. The site visit was followed up with an email from Paul Kettles to the appellant on March 17, 2016.”
The law firm says this email “set out the planning officer’s understanding of the proposed activities” at the site and concluded that under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 pheasant and partridge rearing could be considered as “agriculture”.
Glenshee Pheasantries Limited’s premises between Blairgowrie and Coupar Angus
Their letter to the DPEA continues: “It was on the basis of this email that the appellant proceeded to purchase four acres of land within the site, and conclude a tenancy arrangement for an additional 26.9 acres within the site, which the appellant has agreed to purchase over successive years.
“The email from the planning officer did request further information in relation to the proposals, including the acreage, the basis of the tenant’s occupation, whether the planning officer’s understanding was accurate [and] whether the caravans and steel containers would be removed at the close of the bird rearing season.
“These were all matters which simply sought further factual information for the benefit of the planning officer and did not suggest in any way that the statement made previously in the email was to be qualified to any extent.”
But the law firm’s letter then says council officers conducted a further site visit on June 15 by which time Glenshee Pheasantries Limited had bought the four acres, concluded the lease for the 26.9 acres and had started building enclosures.
They say this visit was followed up with another letter to the appellant in which Paul Kettles stated the council had since “taken the view that game rearing is not agriculture” and that the use of the land for game rearing was “a material change of use of the land from agriculture”.
PKC then served an enforcement notice on Glenshee Pheasantries Limited on November 8 stating: “The council considers that the use of agricultural land for pheasant rearing in practice at the site is a material change of use of the land and is notably different in kind to agriculture.”
It added: “The council considers that the unauthorised material change of use presents issues which adversely affect the visual amenity at the site, and its immediate environs, as well as neighbouring residential amenity.”
The case is currently being considered by a Scottish Government reporter.