HAY-DRIAN’S WALL
Planning row farmer’s 30ft bale ‘revenge’
‘It’s being done out of spite’
VILLAGERS have accused a farmer of being a ‘bully’ after 30ft-high stacks of hay bales were dumped behind homes following a planning row.
Thirty tons of hay have been piled up on trailers in a field beside the back gardens of the £500,000 detached properties.
residents of Ockbrook, Derbyshire say the bales were put there after a planning application by farmer richard Barton to run a waste processing site was rejected.
Peter Shaw, 55, said the bales appeared behind his house last Thursday. He fears they are a fire risk and is urging Mr Barton, 44, to remove them.
Mr Shaw said: ‘The farmer won’t speak to you, I have tried. He’s just a bully. It’s an eyesore. I’m not sure they are even stored correctly. He’s put 30 tons on a trailer. First the lorries came and they were full of hay bales and he put them in place one by one. So we’ve got three in a row. More and more bales were put on top.
‘You can see it from the road, you can see it from the footbridge. It’s about ten metres from my home. If they were to fall then they would destroy my garden. I thought they were a fire risk but the fire brigade said to me they’re not.
‘The farmer has been trying to put a planning application through now for the past eight years. He wants to create a site to process waste.
‘The application has been rejected not just by ourselves but by the whole village. It just seems because my house backs on to his farm we have to bear the brunt of this.’ Mr Shaw, who moved into the property with wife Helen, 50, in 2004, said of the bales: ‘I truly believe it is just something we are going to have to live with now.
‘I have contacted everyone and anyone that I possibly can and nothing seems to be getting done about it.’
Another resident said: ‘ The view from our back garden used to be open fields but now all you can see is a wall of hay.
‘I’m convinced this is some kind of protest against the village because the farmer didn’t get the planning permission he wanted.
‘It’s a form of intimidation and is just simply being done out of spite.’
Derbyshire Fire and rescue Service said: ‘ There is no cause for concern relating to this type of storage in its current state.’ A man at the farm where the bales have been left refused to comment.