Jeremy Clarkson has been ordered to close his farm’s café and restaurant after the local council claimed his business breached planning laws.
The 62-year-old TV presenter opened a 40-seat restaurant in an old lambing barn in July, just months after the council rejected his plans for a bistro in a newer barn as it said it would spoil a protected rural landscape.
Speaking to The Times at the opening, the presenter of Clarkson’s Farm, the Amazon Prime show, claimed he had found a “a cunning little loophole”, which allowed him to change the barn’s use without needing planning permission.
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But the following month West Oxfordshire District Council issued an enforcement notice, ordering Clarkson to stop the use “of any part of the land as a restaurant or café”. It also required the removal of “all tables and chairs, catering vans and mobile toilets on site, as well as all ‘landscaping materials’”, The Times has now reported.
The notice said the shop and restaurant’s “nature, scale [and] siting is unsustainable and incompatible with its countryside location within the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”.
“Agents working on the farm’s behalf denied it breached planning laws and said some of the requirements were ‘excessive’,” reported the BBC. They also said a map served by the council was incorrect and that the notice “should be quashed in its entirety as a result”.
In a statement, the authority said: “The business continues to operate outside the planning permissions granted and advice has been ignored. The activity has also had a significant impact on the local community.”
Clarkson bought the farm in 2008 but it was run by a local farmer until his retirement in 2019. After a famous U-turn on climate change, the TV presenter and motoring journalist chose to see if he could run it himself.
All diners at the café and restaurant were required to consent to being filmed for Clarkson’s Farm. “This is not a viable business but TV content,” said a restaurant reviewer for The Telegraph. But the reviewer did have a “lovely experience” and thought the venue was “quality bonkers”.
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