Gardeners in bizarre planning row

Organisers behind a community allotment project have been forced to put wheels on a greenhouse to slip through council red tape. And similar ridiculous regulations could see them attaching an outboard motor to a potting shed to escape a laborious and costly planning process.

The Food for Thought project in Larkhall, Bath, was set up last year to educate children and adults alike in the basic skills of edible crop growing by a return to the old ways of cultivating produce. It harks back to the time of the celebrated Kitchen Front, when housewives were encouraged by the Government to Grow More Food in an effort to feed a population of 45 million during the Dig for Victory campaign.

But when the project's leaders decided they needed a greenhouse to extend beyond the Second World War range of produce to include garlic, capsicums, chilli peppers and figs, they were hit with an astonishing planning hurdle. Regulators at Bath and North East Somerset Council demanded they go through the process of applying for planning permission for both the greenhouse and potting shed, pay a sum of several hundred pounds and wait months for approval.

David Laming, who runs a boatyard at Keynsham, and Cllr Bryan Chalker started thinking of ways to outfox the penpushers and soon hit upon the idea of turning the structures into mobile 'vehicles' instead of buildings. Having quizzed the planners on whether this would circumvent the regulations and being told it would, they set about retrieving some heavy-duty wheels to mount the greenhouse on.

Mr Laming said: "It's crazy. If we had wanted to put the greenhouse up as a fixed structure we would have had to pay £160, complete detailed plans, make six copies of all the documents and wait months for the planners to get round to passing approval. When you think that the council has provided a grant of £4,000 for this project but we would then have to pay them for the privilege of having a greenhouse, it's just farcical.

"The same rules apparently apply to our little six by four potting shed, but if they say anything about that I will attach an outboard engine to it and turn it into a marine potting shed and sail it down to Larkhall village to get the shopping." Cllr Chalker said that it had taken a great deal of innovation and diplomacy to get round the planning issue.