Lammas Ecovillage, Wales gets Planning Approval (finally!)

Today the Lam­mas group won plan­ning per­mis­sion for their ecov­il­lage project.

Lam­mas is a new set­tle­ment of 9 eco-small­hold­ings, a camp­site and a com­mu­ni­ty hub build­ing, to start con­struc­tion this autumn. It will be sit­ed on 76 acres of mixed pas­ture and wood­land next to the vil­lage of Gland­wr, Pem­brokeshire. The site is on land cur­rent­ly belong­ing to Pont-y-gafel farm, next to the vil­lage of Gland­wr, North Pem­brokeshire. The site is cur­rent­ly used as farm­land.

After their first appli­ca­tion was turned down for insuf­fi­cient detail, Lam­mas put in an amend­ed appli­ca­tion on March 17th 2008. The first appli­ca­tion had filled an entire wheel­bar­row (the sec­ond con­tain­u­ing 150 illus­tra­tions and 1200 pages of text would have requ­uired 2 bar­rows — so it was sub­mit­ted elec­tron­i­cal­ly!) How­ev­er, their sec­ond appli­ca­tion was again turned down in Sep­tem­ber 2008. Fur­ther frus­tra­tion was expe­ri­enced when the Welsh Assem­bly refused them the right to appeal on the grounds that the appli­ca­tion was invalid on some tech­ni­cal­i­ty. How­ev­er, appeal they did, and the appeal into the refusal of the revised plan­ning appli­ca­tion was heard ear­li­er this sum­mer. The inspec­tor, intrigued and unvon­ven­tion­al­ly, chose not to allow lam­ma’s expert wit­ness­es to present their full cas­es in favour, pre­fer­ring to open the debate about the appli­ca­tion to the whole floor so that all voic­es in favour and against the appli­ca­tion were heard. Insp­tec­tor took a few weeks to reach his deci­sion in con­sid­er­ing the whole appli­ca­tion.

Despite the launch of a pio­neer­ing low-impact pol­i­cy by Pem­brokeshire Coun­ty Coun­cil in 2006 and years of metic­u­lous ground­work, con­scien­cious ded­i­ca­tion and patient delib­er­a­tion, the long exact­ing process sought for approval of the project has tak­en over 2 years since the ini­tial appli­ca­tion was first sub­mit­ted. Empha­sis­ing the imbal­ance of the cur­rent plan­ning sys­tem which does­n’t take account of cli­mate change, Paul Wim­bush of the Lam­mas project even sug­gest­ed that it would have been eas­i­er to have applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to build a pow­er sta­tion! That it has suc­ceed­ed is due to a tremen­dous dri­ve to suc­ceed born of an inspi­ra­tional vision of low impact/low car­bon liv­ing for the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Lam­mas was con­ceived as the first large-scale low impact project that would work with the plan­ning sys­tem, (ie: to apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion in advance of the con­struc­tion and estab­lish­ment of the project, or in oth­er word, not ret­ro­spec­tive­ly). The Lam­mas Ecov­il­lage will be com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent of all mains ser­vices. All water will be sourced from the site using a com­bi­na­tion of an exist­ing spring for drink­ing water and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing from rooftops. All elec­tric­i­ty will be pro­duced on site using renew­ables. For­tu­nate­ly there is an exist­ing water tur­bine sys­tem on site which Lam­mas plans to ren­o­vate. All organ­ic waste will be com­post­ed on site using a com­bi­na­tion of com­post toi­lets, wormeries and com­post heaps. Fuel, in the form of cop­piced wil­low and ele­phant grass, will be grown on site.

The project will be man­aged by Lam­mas Low Impact Ini­tia­tives Ltd, a coop­er­a­tive reg­is­tered under the Indus­tri­al and Prov­i­dent Soci­ety Act. A com­pre­hen­sive man­age­ment plan has been com­piled which sets out how the project will be estab­lished and run.

The small­hold­ings will essen­tial­ly be agri­cul­tur­al lease­holds which are con­di­tion­al­ly tied to require­ments as set out in the man­age­ment plan. Thus the objec­tives of the project will be assured in the long term. The require­ments will cov­er issues such as liveli­hood, trans­port, ser­vices and mon­i­tor­ing.

The peo­ple select­ed for the first phase of the project have devel­oped well researched plans for their liveli­hoods. In addi­tion to sourc­ing fuel, water, elec­tric­i­ty and food from the site, the 9 house­holds will also run small-scale farm busi­ness­es pro­duc­ing a wide range of qual­i­ty goods includ­ing hazel­nuts, smoked ham, soft fruit, wood­land crafts, veg­eta­bles and cooked foods. The pro­duce will be mar­ket­ed through a vari­ety of out­lets includ­ing local shops and a Lam­mas mar­ket stall.

Com­mon Land
Some areas of the project will be man­aged in com­mon. There is an area of exist­ing broadleaf wood­land on site which will be con­served for its wildlife val­ue. The exist­ing conifer wood­land will be man­aged and har­vest­ed as a resource for build­ing. There will also be shared graz­ing and fuel crop areas as well as a millpond and vil­lage green.

In hind­sight
As Larch Max­ey has writ­ten: “Lam­mas soft­ly-soft­ly approach, seek­ing to work with the plan­ning sys­tem, has led to huge delays while prospec­tive res­i­dents liv­ing local­ly [have poured] sav­ings into inad­e­quate acco­mo­da­tion. Oppor­tu­ni­ties to har­ness peo­ple’s ener­gy have been lost. Whilst it remains invalu­able to have the Low-Impact Devel­op­ment move­ment broad­ened by projects seek­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion before mov­ing on, the plan­ning sys­tem is ill equipped for the speed and scale of the chal­langes we face. Until it is equipped, peo­ple must con­tin­ue to take direct action towards the sus­tain­abil­i­ty tran­si­tion in every way they can {includ­ing} build­ing low impact lives”.

More Info:
Ref: http://www.lammas.org.uk/ecovillage/news.htm