TORTEVAL’S last farmer fears that he will be forced out of business by August. Frank Le Cheminant’s application to build a slurry store and cattle shed has been rejected by the Island Development Committee.

He wants to move his 70 cows from one farm in Torteval across the parish to the former Smithfield Vinery site, where he is now resident. The landlord of the herd’s present home wants the building back for his own use by the end of August.

‘If we don’t get permission, we won’t be farming,’ said Mr Le Cheminant.

‘The IDC turned us down a few weeks ago, after eight months of waiting. I am angry that they took that long. We were chasing them for months and months,’ he said.

‘I am hoping they will reconsider, but we need to know by August.’

Mr Le Cheminant has put in a further application to the IDC asking it to reconsider. The proposal is to demolish a boiler house and packing shed and erect a slurry store and cattle shed. He changed the initial plans so that the slurry store would be situated beneath the shed, but these were still rejected.

From October this year, new regulations will make it essential for farmers to have a slurry store. To reduce the risk of polluting the water supply during the wetter months, they will not be able to spread manure on fields from 1 October to 31 December each year.

‘I am annoyed, especially as the States subsidised farmers to keep them going – and where the island is most rural, they won’t have any farms at all. It doesn’t really make sense.’

Mr Le Cheminant said that he could not make the slurry store any smaller, but added that the farm would be only medium-sized, big enough for him and his son. He thought the plans were rejected because the proposed site is near the parish cemetery.

In a further attempt to continue farming, he has also applied for a change in the zoning of a back field. It is currently green belt, but if this was changed, he could put the slurry store there.

Opposition to the application has come from neighbours, members of the douzaine and Torteval deputy Pat Robilliard. They are opposed to a shed that would house 70 cattle being built next to a road and the cemetery.

‘People do want to encourage more cattle in the parish and we are not objecting to that, but it is the size of the shed and where it will be,’ said Deputy Robilliard.

‘We are not talking about a small shed; it would be an enormous building, right on the main road and with houses very near to it. If it were down the lane, away from the houses, it would be a different matter.’

She said that the Smithfield site had never been a farm. It was a vinery and then a packing store for flowers. She had anticipated a further application and doubted the neighbours had retracted their objections.