Jeremy Clarkson is waiting to hear if the council will approve his ideal plans for the newly built car park on his Diddly Squat Farm.
The Grand Tour star has requested for trees and bushes to surround visitors’ parked vehicles, but a landscape and forestry council officer has explained why it’s not such a good idea.
In documents about his request, the West Oxfordshire District Council worker said: “There does not appear to be a need for so many potentially very large trees along the boundary hedging around the car park.
“A hedgerow maintained at about 3m in height to screen parked vehicles should be sufficient. Perhaps a few crab apple and field maple would suffice.”
A large number of trees, they added, “will shade out hedging plants in a relatively short time, particularly the larger ones (Beech, Oak, Field maple, Wild cherry etc)” and “reduce the effectiveness of hedging”.
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A previous attempt to win planning permission to install proper parking facilities was turned down by the council earlier this year.
In June however, he was finally given the green light and two months later, 70 temporary additional parking spaces were created.
While the added spaces helped with the organisation, staff at the time reportedly had to open another field nearby for 100 more cars to park on grass, due to the influx of visitors.
Planning officer RJ Perrins granted permission for “an extension to existing parking area to formalise temporary parking and provision of new access arrangements”.
He added: “[Diddly Squat] does not ask for an entrance fee or advertise as a leisure or tourist attraction, it is not comparable to say a Wildlife Park or miniature railway which are reliant upon attracting tourists and paying visitors to be viable.”
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Perrins went on to say that he was “not surprised” that “tensions have run high” between locals and visitors over the parking situation and traffic it had caused.
Express.co.uk has contacted a representative for the West Oxfordshire District Council for comment.
Jeremy has previously ranted about the difficulties of getting plans approved by the council.
Speaking on TalkTV, he said: “I don’t know what you have to do, but I simply can’t get planning permission for anything, which is infuriating.”
This was proved when he put forward plans to open up a restaurant on the farm.
He subsequently opened a restaurant in an agricultural barn using a “delightful little loophole” but the council later enforced action to close it.
Due to the amount of people visiting the eatery at the time however, locals issued complaints to the council claiming it was disrupting the area and causing traffic chaos.
Following this, a report said the restaurant was ruled to have “resulted in harm” to the local area and was rejected in order to “protect the intrinsic character of the area and landscape; to conserve the natural beauty, scenic beauty and landscape of the AONB.”
Filming for Clarkson’s Farm series three is currently underway. Series one and two are available to watch on Amazon.
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