A farmer in Totnes has been denied permission for a new barn that would have enabled him to store livestock and agricultural equipment.

Council officers deemed the building of 45 square metres too big for the one-acre area of land it would have been placed in, so recommended that councillors refuse it, writes Local Democracy Reporter Rob Kershaw.

At a South Hams’ development management committee on Wednesday (March 15) an agent on behalf of the farmer said he is “devastated” by the decision.

Cllr Jacqi Hodgson (Green, Dartington and Staverton) sided with the farmer, who employs a ‘no-dig’ policy and wants to teach his young family how to live more sustainably.

“I think we need to be perhaps a little bit more flexible,” she said. “If we want young families and young people come into the farming community and start to thrive, and start to show us how farming can have a lower carbon footprint, how it can be more diverse and how it can also help us with what we have a problem with at the moment, which is actually having food in this country.”

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But Cllr Julian Brazil (Liberal Democrats, Stokenham) disagreed, suggesting that allowing the building on a small area of land could open the floodgates to overdevelopment.

“Whereas I have much sympathy with the current applicant and his position, I’m afraid I absolutely can’t support this,” he said. “Because, I know we can’t set precedents but if we are going to allow this kind of size shed to be built on every single acre on the South Hams, it would massively change the landscape. And I don’t believe that that is what we are trying to do.”

The new farming storage building was refused by eight votes to four.