Change of use and extensions of former agricultural buildings and land, provision of staff welfare facilities and siting of containers, yard office and generator, extensions to smokery and re-arrangement of car parking areas to separate staff and customers, provision of improved drainage facilities, underground fish store and water tanks together with associated landscaping, CCTV pole and extension to existing restaurant opening hours to 21:00 on Fridays (Retrospective).

This item was considered at the committee meeting on 10 January 2012. (This meeting was adjourned by the Chairman of the Committee and suspended until 17 January 2012).

Change of use and extensions of former agricultural buildings and land, provision of staff welfare facilities and siting of containers, yard office and generator, extensions to smokery and re-arrangement of car parking areas to separate staff and customers, provision of improved drainage facilities, underground fish store and water tanks together with associated landscaping, CCTV pole and extension to existing restaurant opening hours to 21:00 on Fridays (Retrospective).

This item was considered at the adjourned committee meeting on 10 January 2012

Change of use and extensions of former agricultural buildings and land, provision of staff welfare facilities and siting of containers, yard office and generator, extensions to smokery and re-arrangement of car parking areas to separate staff and customers, provision of improved drainage facilities, underground fish store and water tanks together with associated landscaping, CCTV pole and extension to existing restaurant opening hours to 21:00 on Fridays (Retrospective).

Change of use and extensions of former agricultural buildings and land, provision of staff welfare facilities and siting of containers, yard office and generator, extensions to smokery and re-arrangement of car parking areas to separate staff and customers, provision of improved drainage facilities, underground fish store and water tanks together with associated landscaping, CCTV pole and extension to existing restaurant opening hours to 21:00 on Fridays (Retrospective).

Please refer to the late material circulated before the start of the meeting

Principal Planning Officer, Martin Hillier, gave a brief overview of the history to the planning application and informed members that this application and the applications to be considered as items 5.2 and 5.3 of the agenda were interlinked. He referred members to the letters of support that had been included in the late material and said that the application was essentially a retrospective application relating to work that had been undertaken on existing buildings at the site.

Public speaking

Speaking as an objector to the application, the first speaker made the following statement: -

‘When we moved to Chaxhill in 1998 there was no smokery there - Severn & Wye were based at smaller premises at Walmore Hill but they soon started up

on the second site. At first everything was lovely - we had a nice shop and restaurant which made a welcome addition to the neighbourhood. But behind the scenes other things were happening too and we recently came to realise that we've got a sizeable fish processing plant on our doorstep. Furthermore we find that a lot of this development has taken place without planning permission.

The Cook family should be complimented for turning their small business into such a successful and prestigious company. However when it means that their neighbours have to pay the price for that success we need to think very carefully.

This first application appears at first sight to be purely retrospective for work already carried out, but look more closely and you will see it is a confusing mixture of past, present and future, so you need to be very careful what future work you are approving. For example, this application mentions changes to the drainage arrangements including decommissioning of the klargester, which makes sense if and only if the following proposal for the waste lagoon is approved.

We currently suffer frequent overpowering smells of smoking fish inside our house. At a distance of some 300 yards this does perhaps seem surprising but nevertheless it happens. I cannot explain why it happens and I dare say Mr Cook will also be unable to explain it. My point is that there is not a complete understanding of how air circulation works at a detailed local level and can we be certain that odours of rotting fish and sewage from the proposed lagoons won't join the smoky aroma?

More generally, the smokery has made so many alterations without planning permission that we fear they'll just continue in the same way and in a few years  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5