Locals hope to derail poultry plant progress
Questions over PKC’s handling of egg facility bid
A Perthshire man has questioned the competency of council planners over their handling of a series of applications for what is set to become a huge egg-laying operation near Bankfoot.
Tullybelton resident David Murray, who lives about half a mile away from a wooded area where Perth and Kinross Council recently granted a German company planning permission to build three poultry “production” houses, believes officers failed to properly notify nearby residents of the significance of the major development.
In addition Mr Murray has highlighted how contractors laid waste to a huge swathe of trees at the site near Bankfoot before Lohmann Tierzucht UK Ltd met a specific condition attached to its planning consent which was supposed to prevent any harm coming to any protected species living within the area.
The dispute has also exposed apparent confusion within PKC about enforcement action that was taken to stop the developer doing any more preparatory work at the site once the breach of the condition was reported to officers.
Campaigning over the last few months to have planning permission for the development revoked on behalf of the residents of Tullybelton, Mr Murray revealed he has even written to the council’s chief executive, Bernadette Malone, about the matter, insisting she attend to the dispute herself and not pass it “down the line to the very person who has not understood the issue from the outset”.
His main concern centres on the fact that when a Proposal of Application (PAN) notice was publicised in Bankfoot and in the pages of the PA the planned development was described as a “poultry rearing” farm, suggesting the development would be used solely to raise chickens.
Mr Murray has highlighted that in the subsequent planning application, which was approved by the council, the development was then described as a “poultry layer farm” where it is now understood tens of thousands of adult chickens will be kept in cages to lay eggs.
Mr Murray believes if the local community had known what was really being proposed at the outset, opposition to the development would have been a lot stronger at the time out of concerns about the unpleasant emissions he says the farm is likely to generate and the application might not have been approved.
His letter to Ms Malone, seen by the PA, said: “We consider that the [PAN] notices published ... was more than inaccurate. It was misleading, perhaps intentionally misleading, and is regarded by this community to be flawed.
“It is our view that as the applicant’s PAN process was flawed the [development management committee’s] approval decision should [be] withdrawn.”
Speaking to the PA this week about his ongoing campaign, Mr Murray also revealed that he had to inform PKC that contractors had started tearing down trees at the site ahead of a planning condition being met that stated “prior to the commencement of development an updated ecological impact assessment must be submitted to and agreed by the planning authority.”
“That woodland had a lot of wildlife. There were squirrels, there were owls, there were bats,” he said. “But about 10 days before Christmas the developer came in with a 23-tonne excavator and started ripping through the woodland.
“We eventually got a hold of an enforcement officer and he got it stopped. But in the four hours the machine was there, they destroyed a huge area of the woodland.”
It was only after the excavator had effectively cleared the site, Mr Murray went on to say, that Lohmann Tierzucht UK Ltd then completed its “updated” ecological impact assessment.
“Guess what? They found no signs of wildlife - but only because they’d disturbed
David Murray at the proposed site where the council claim “some” trees have been felled