Couple behind vegan fermenting business granted approval for bus holiday stay

Twm Owen, Local Democracy Reporter

A couple who make vegan products from food waste will be able to use a parked bus as holiday accommodation.

Madi Myers and partner Arthur Serini run food fermenting business, Crafty Pickle, and plan to provide visitors attending workshops in their kitchen with overnight stays on a converted single decker, grey bus parked outside Madi’s father’s home.

The local community council objected to the planning application for change of use permission for the land in the open countryside but Monmouthshire County Council’s planning department dismissed its concerns and recommended its delegated planning panel grant the permission to applicant Andrew Myers.

The application explained the 13 metres long, and 3.5m tall, bus has a shower room and is connected to a septic tank it shares with Mr Myers’ Crossways Cottage home around a mile from the villages of Shirenewton and Llanfair Discoed.

The bus would be used to provide short stay, holiday let accommodation in connection with the existing food production business for no more than 50 nights a year and would be in private use at all other times.

Guests would stay overnight in the bus when attending workshops and visiting the Crafty Pickle’s kitchen at nearby Bently Green Farm in Crick.

Sustainable tourism 

The bus was driven on to the land, and could be driven away, which Monmouthshire council planning officer Kate Young said was in line with a sustainable tourism policy, which can allow exemptions against the usual presumption against development in the opern countryside, and there are paving slabs under each wheel with no intention of providing a permanent paved area.

Her report said: “Significant additional planting is proposed on the site in line with the applicant’s permaculture beliefs.”

Shirenewton Community Council objected and claimed there was no planning permission in place for the bus or its use as an annex, or additional room, to the main house or use in connection with the business.

It said if the county council was willing to grant planning permission it should impose conditions including the bus should be painted dark green and permission should expire after five years. The community council also claimed as the bus isn’t owned by Mr Myers it would be difficult to enforce planning conditions.

But that was dismissed by Ms Young who stated in her report: “The applicant owns the garden on which the bus is situated and his daughter owns the bus but this has no relevance to the application and does not impact on the imposition or enforcement of any condition.”

She said no permission was required to use the bus as a residential annex and neither is permission required for working from home and said there was no justification for requiring the bus to be painted or removed after five years.

Madi Myers and partner Arthur Serini established Crafty Pickle, after meeting at university in Aberdeen and employ a small part time workforce manufacturing sauerkrauts and kimchis, a Korean vegetable dish, using food collected by charity Fareshare Cardiff which aims to prevent surplus food going to waste.

Mr Serini said: “fermenting describes the “transformation process by microbes” of preserving, or producing, food.

“The simple explanation a lot people know is milk into yogurt or milk into cheese or grain into bread or beer. All these sort of foods have a fermenting process and our process is no different other than we use vegetables and the microbes remain alive and active which is the appeal of these types of food.”