Like two sects of the same religion, while both bodies claim the preservation of the countryside as their principal purpose, they differ wildly on how that might be achieved. “We do not believe a landowner should have carte blanche any more than any other citizen,” says Tony Bailey, Chief Policy Adviser of the Country Landowners Association. “But they do have the right to make economic use of their land.”"We simply don’t accept that view,” says Tony Burton, chief planning officer of the CPRE “There is a wider public interest. The system as it stands doesn’t really address some of the qualitative things that people value in the countryside: the views, the tranquillity, the birdsong Once those things have gone, they have gone forever. “The White Paper will have some fresh input from an unexpected source. At the end of this month, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is expected to deliver its final judgment on a case which epitomises planning paranoia.

The case of the Higher Whitley barns.John Bryan took his argument there after he was told by Vale Royal Council that the barns had to come down. He tried to appeal through a British court, but was told he could not So he went to Strasbourg. An interim judgement there ruled last year that British law, by refusing his right of appeal, breached Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Until the final judgment is given, Strasbourg asked the warring parties to “seek a friendly settlement”.

Which shows how little the court in Strasbourg knows about planning paranoia. During the course of the judgement, Vale Royal demolished two of Mr Bryan’s barns and, after threatening him with all sorts of legal to-ing and fro-ing, he knocked down the third. If he wins at the end of the month, he can’t get his barns back, but he is hoping for compensation – over pounds 150,000 his solicitor has asked for. The council, meanwhile, are hoping he does not.And if Strasbourg agrees with Mr Bryan, the balance in the debate will have shifted significantly Planning paranoia may never be the same again.. Lucky the men and women who can drive to work without risk of becoming stuck in traffic, who have parking space galore when they arrive, and who, from their office, can look down over 20 acres of wheat to a sweep of forest in the distance. Such is the lot of the staff at Berringtons, the Herefordshire firm of chartered surveyors.

Until three years ago they were based in the centre of Hereford, which suffers nightmare congestion at rush-hours; now they are happily ensconced in a former bull-pen deep in the heart of the 5,500-acre Whitfield Estate.
It would be hard to imagine more glorious surroundings. The estate has belonged to the Clive family since 1800, and today George Clive – a gentle, scholarly bachelor in his fifties – runs it with skill and imagination, combining an awareness of the need to innovate with a strong feel for tradition.The conversion of the bull-pen is only one of the new projects on which the estate has launched out in recent years. Another conversion has been that of a disused barn into a light industrial plant producing Tippy metal bins for carrying hot ashes. With coal fires generally on their way out, this does not sound a very promising idea; yet demand and output have both risen steadily.Besides, Mr Clive soon realised that the manufacturing process could easily be adapted to the production of hoppers for putting out poisoned squirrel bait, and the plant is now turning out these as well. The venture is thus a success on all fronts: it is making money, it is using a building which had become surplus to requirements, and it is giving full-time employment to two farm staff, who might otherwise have had to be paid off.Across the yard stand huge brick barns – high and handsome structures dating from the 17th century. One has already been converted and let to a restorer of classic cars, and work has started on another.

Even closer to Mr Clive’s heart is his scheme plan for commercial production of Meconopsis, the Himalayan poppy.This normally flourishes 10,000ft above sea-level in places such as Nepal, and is notoriously difficult to grow from seed. But Mr Clive, who himself has the greenest of fingers, got some plants established in his own woodland garden, and has now set up a full-scale production unit.In the words of John Edmonds, the horticultural consultant attached to the project, Meconopsis is “every gardener’s dream”, in that, once established, it will continue to flower for years. But he concedes it is difficult to grow, and after various experiments has come to the conclusion that “it doesn’t like being watered from above”. Hence his serried ranks of plastic pots, standing on sand and watered from below by a system of trickle irrigation which comes on seven times a day for 15 minutes.Arrangements are already in hand to market the plants, which will cost up to pounds 8.99 apiece. But since at garden centres at least two-thirds of buys are made on impulse, Mr Edmonds is confident that the sky-blue flowers will sweep customers off their feet.With all these developments designed to generate extra jobs and income, it may sound as if the Whitfield Estate is becoming industrialised. Far from it: the rolling woods and fields look the epitome of English landscape.