Amid vocal local opposition, a berry grower which supplies one of the UK’s largest fruit producer organisations and a key Poupart Group business has won the right to continue using polytunnels.
TW Busby & Son, which grows strawberries and raspberries on four sites in Staffordshire, got planning permission from Stafford Borough Council on Monday (21 September) to retain its polytunnels on land between Wilbrighton Road and Stafford Road in Coley.
A protest group, Say No To Polytunnels, has been making its discontentment known, while local residents wrote to the planning authority in the run-up to the decision to express fears on traffic, noise and visual issues, plus potential harm to protected species, birds and the adjacent Aqualate Mere nature reserve, the largest area of open water in the West Midlands.
Local MP Bill Cash also chipped in, telling the planning authority that he backed residents with their fears, and noted that a wide-ranging assessment on the TW Busby & Son plans was needed in terms of the financial benefits to the rural economy.
Tom Busby, of TW Busby & Son, a member of the Asplins PO, and a grower of preferred varieties for Poupart firm BerryWorld, said: “We don’t want to be the unapproachable big business in the countryside with no concern for local residents.
“Some of the views expressed are unreasonable, but we are happy to meet local residents and see if as a business we can alleviate their concerns and work alongside them.
“We’ve been on the site for the last six or seven years, but it’s only the last two years or so that councils have started wanting planning permission. The conditions we have to meet are above and beyond what you normally have to meet, including a reduction in the production area, and it’s not going to be inexpensive for us.
'We have no mass expansion planned, though – you ultimately put these applications in to make things flexible, and that can be disconcerting to some.”
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