The UK’s biggest fruit-growing firm has been given the go-ahead to install 20 caravans at its site in southern Canterbury - despite fears the new workforce “village” will have disastrous repercussions on the countryside.

FW Mansfield & Son, which has bases spread across the county, needs extra static homes at its branch outside Bridge in order to farm 275 acres of fields it has recently snapped up.

The multi-million pound company says it is creating 80 jobs as a result of the expansion.

A number of critics hit out the plan to pitch up the caravans in an Area of Natural Outstanding Beauty, and stressed how existing problems will be exacerbated by a 40% rise in population at the site.

But Canterbury City Council, which last year said the farm’s expansion will be a boost for the district post-Brexit, rubber-stamped the proposals at a virtual planning committee meeting last week.

The scheme was approved by nine votes to four.

Concerned neighbour Deborah Campbell called on the committee to throw out the plan, citing feats over increases in anti-social noise and behaviour.

She said villagers are already blighted by continuous problems.

“There is constant noise from 4am until 2am the next day, seven days a week,” she said.

“There are workers shouting at each other at 4am, artic lorry engines left running, forklifts, sirens, parties, barbecues and cars being fixed in the middle of the night.

“A 40% increase in these problems will be disastrous.”

She also claimed the access road will become “perilously dangerous” as a result of the extra numbers working at the site.

Despite her objections and a string of others, including claims that some existing staff defecate near public footpaths and dump litter, the plan for 20 additional caravans was rubber-stamped.

The new employees will be based at Middle Pett Farm, housed in the six-berth static homes. They are then set to work picking fruit on the neighbouring fields at Nackington Farm, which the business acquired last summer on a 20-year lease.

Planning law stipulates that agricultural firms can pitch caravans for seasonal workers on their land without actually requiring planning permission. The permission is in fact only required for the few months in the winter when the caravans are used as storage rather than for accommodation.

This is what has played out at Mansfields, with the company now gaining the green light to use the static homes as storage space in the winter.

As a result, the city council’s vice chairman Cllr Ashley Clark has this week written to the Government’s housing minister Robert Jenrick calling for a change in law.

“We are finding that we are ending up with large assemblies of caravans on some farms that dwarf the numbers of local people and this is associated with complaints of noise, traffic and anti-social behaviour. Of particular concern is the harmful effect this can have on the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

“Accordingly, we ask that permitted development rights be removed in respect of caravans in the AONB.

“This is not to prevent it happening but to ensure that proper scrutiny is applied, that representations from those with the role of protecting, managing and enhancing such areas can be properly heard, that the most attractive parts of the zone are not inappropriately violated and that appropriate mitigation measures can be conditioned.”

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