Westridge Farm housing plan approved, despite family’s plea

Permission has been given to build a large-scale housing estate on the site of a dairy farm on the Isle of Wight, which will displace the family who have farmed there for more than 50 years.

Tenant farmers Nigel and Amy Holliday and their son, Archie, had campaigned to save Westridge Farm, near Ryde, but the Isle of Wight Council’s planning committee has granted permission to developer Captiva Homes.

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The Hollidays signed an Agricultural Holdings Act tenancy in October 1966, which gives them permission to work the holding for three generations, and Archie, 9, is next in line to take on the farm.

More than 470 homes will be built on the site of the dairy farm. Captiva said there was a critical need for new housing in the area and the new West Acre Park would provide 166 affordable homes to residents on the Isle of Wight.

The decision was reached after a three-hour debate by the council’s planning committee on Tuesday (27 July), the Isle of Wight County Press reported.

Mrs Holliday told the meeting: “We wish to keep farming. We will lose our home and our livelihood … this would close the farm forever.”

More than 5,000 people signed a petition against the development, which the Hollidays said will “destroy the link with the natural environment”.

A spokesman for Captiva Homes said: “We are sympathetic to the situation of the farmer and his family who have rented the land for many years.

“The landowner has chosen to sell the farm and part of the site was proposed as suitable for housing development by the Isle of Wight Council in 2013.”