Since the autumn of 2021 the Society has been campaigning against the proposed construction of both an agricultural storage building and an access track on land at Butterford in the parish of North Huish.

Eventually, in February 2023, we finally succeeded in obtaining acknowledgement from the Council’s Head of Legal Services that the original decision to issue the prior approval for the agricultural storage building was unsound and that the Council's decision-making process had been flawed.

Then in February of this year an Enforcement Notice was finally issued, requiring the land owner to remove all of the rubble/hardcore and stone piles from the land and to scrape the soil back over the line of the unauthorised track to ensure the levels of the field were returned it to their original levels and sloping nature.

You can find links to the various letters of representation submitted by the Society as part of our campaign here, while the full story of the many hours spent struggling to ensure the Council's Enforcement Team honoured their commitment that the track would be removed and the land restored to its original condition – The never ending saga of Butterford, can be found on page 17 of our January 2024 Newsletter, a copy of which you can download here.

However, the Enforcement Notice is not the end of the story. An appeal has since been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate to which the Society has responded.