Chicken farm recommended for refusal
Plans for a free range egg farm in the Ceiriog Valley, which would include a building more than 200 feet long, are likely to be thrown out.
Council planners say the building would be intrusive in the area of special landscape value. Deliveries to and from the farm would be via Selattyn near Oswestry.
Applicants E and J Morris, who also have a property on the edge of Oswestry, have applied to Wrexham County Borough Council for permission to create an egg production unit for 16,000 birds at Llwyn Mawr, Pontfadog.
They say they have lived in the valley all their life, as their parents and grandparents did, and that the building, the first of its kind in the area, was designed to meet the changing face of modern agriculture.
They point out it is considerably smaller than units being constructed in other authorities and that the eggs would go to a local packing depot creating employment.
"The valley is a farming community and therefore agricultural expansion and investment should be supported," the application documents say.
In a report to Monday's planning committee the council says that a large industrial scale building would be foreign within a landscape of natural beauty.
Supporters of the chicken farm scheme have also written to the council.
The planning department's report to councillors recommends refusal of permission saying: "The principle of new agricultural buildings is the countryside is supported, but there is concern that the scale of this isolated building at this location is not fully justified at this time."
