A family-run farm business is set to close after more than a decade – putting 26 people out of a job – after it was ruled ‘intrusive in the countryside’.

David Quinn of New Luckhurst Farm in Smarden runs Quinn Farm Services, an agricultural haulage business with eight lorries.

Mr Quinn grows crops on the farm and his lorries are used to carry grain, compost and farm machinery.

But after neighbours complained to Smarden Parish Council that the lorries were disruptive he was handed an enforcement notice in January 2014 demanding he relocates.

On Wednesday, October 8, he discovered he had lost the appeal and Ashford Borough Council gave him 12 months to cease running the business from his yard.

Mr Quinn, who has lived in the village with his family for 26 years, believes he will have to shut down the business, which is run by his two sons, because he cannot afford to relocate.

He claims the exhausting three-year legal battle has cost him £54,000 and relocating to a new site could set him back up to £2million.

He said: “I can’t believe the council would put 26 people out of a job simply because you can see the top of a few lorries from a footpath.

“I can’t afford to relocate and it makes no sense anyway because most of my customers are in the are.

"We would double the movements we make because we would still have to come back to the same customers and we would still be using the same roads.

"I feel Ashford Borough Council and Smarden Parish Council keep contradicting themselves."

A spokesman from ABC said: “The independent inspector appointed by the government to conduct the appeal upheld the council’s enforcement notice, citing not only that there were issues of character and appearance within the rural setting but that highway safety and the degree of disturbance for local residents were also concerns.”

Mr Quinn added: “How can the inspector judge what a farm should look like? We completed a traffic survey and a noise survey and both came back with results showing that we are not making a nuisance of ourselves so I don’t understand how there are still concerns."

John Lowings, chairman of Smarden Parish Council, said: "The main objections of Smarden Parish Council to the haulage business of Quinn Farm Services were that the local minor roads and lanes were far too narrow for 44 tonne lorries using the roads 7 days a week.

"There were dozens of local objectors when Quinn Farm Services were required to make a retrospective application for planning permission in 2012.

"That application was unanimously rejected by the full meeting of the Ashford BC planning committee. The Inquiry last month was an appeal from that decision and the Inspector upheld the unanimous democratic decision of Ashford BC.

"The visual impact of the lorries on the landscape was a very minor aspect of the parish council's case."

Mr Quinn added: “It is frustrating because the application was to just keep our lorries here at night and we even offered to put them in a barn so they were out of sight.

"I'll either have to shut the business down or relocate. But I'll still be using these roads because this is where the customers are. If I don't do this, someone else will have to.

“It is absolutely heartbreaking and I can’t believe we lost the appeal.”