Comments Guidance Note – Planning Application Highland Cow Cottage

We are pleased to announce that the Full Application to formalise the use and temporary buildings for Highland Cow Cottage has been submitted to South Cambridgeshire District Council (part of the Greater Cambridge Planning Authority). The application is logged under the reference number 25/01358/FUL and is for the:

“Retrospective change of use of land to leisure and tourism use to support the highland cow petting farm enterprise, and the siting of 4no temporary buildings, 1no portable horse trailer bar and 6no afternoon tea pods.”

As the application has now been validated, we would like to open up the possibility for members of the Highland Cow Cottage community to provide comments of support for this application and help us achieve a positive result for this fantastic business.

Comments can be made via the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning portal, where you will need to register for an account and then login (this should only take a few minutes). Then search on the search function for the reference number above and write your comment on the comments tab. You can access the portal by clicking the button bellow.

It is important that comments consider planning policy elements that are relevant to Highland Cow Cottage. To help you, below we have included a number of points that would be useful to include in a comment to the Local Planning Authority.

• About you: Your location, proximity and involvement with Highland Cow Cottage. If you are a local person and love to see the cows on your regular walks, or to visit the shop, please do share this. If you have travelled to the area, or plan to, especially to visit us, it would be great to share this as well.
• Current situation: How you know about Highland Cow Cottage and, if you have visited, please do include any positive experiences. If you plan to come, even if you have been struggling to get a booking slot due to high demand, please also highlight this.
• Creating local facilities: The Highland Cow Cottage proposal not only includes the provision of the Highland Cow site itself but also the Arrington village pub, which has been reopened as a tea room after a lengthy closure thanks to the Highland Cow Cottage team. This has provided a much-needed social space for Arrington village and also offers overnight accommodation allowing people to stay longer in the area, especially whilst coming to visit our lovely cows. Any comments referring to the success of this reopening and the benefit it has had to the local community would be much appreciated.
• Creating jobs in a rural area: So far, the Highland Cow Cottage site has created up to 10 new jobs for the Arrington locality, most notably for the management of the farming operation, the running of the village pub, the management of the merchandise shop and other facilities on site, as well as many more. If you see the positive impact this has had on Arrington as a community, please add a comment to this effect.
• Public Right of Way: If you use the Public Right of Way running through the site, how the access has changed as a result of the work by Highland Cow Cottage. Comments relating to the fact that the proposal and temporary buildings have not had an impact on the rural character of the site and that it has maintained its rural appearance from the footpaths across the site. Our improvement works and provision of a permissive path have hopefully led to a much better user experience for local people. Hopefully you all agree that Highland Cow Cottage is not in any way disruptive but instead it is enjoyable to go for a walk and see the cows.
• Charitable benefits: We would like to invite any comments from any Charities of individuals with additional needs we have worked closely with, or anyone that has had positive experiences at, Highland Cow Cottage thanks to our charity partnerships. This aspect of our business is incredibly important to us. Even if you haven’t made use of a charity yourself, it would be lovely to hear your thoughts on all the charitable work we do. This is only possible as a direct result of Highland Cow Cottage remaining a viable business, which can only happen with the grant of planning permission.
• Benefits to local businesses: we are really pleased to hear that so many local businesses have benefitted as a result of Highland Cow Cottage. If you can highlight this in your comments it would be very helpful. For example, you might have stayed in a local hotel or B&B, visited local pubs or shops, used local taxi firms or even made a holiday (visiting Cambridge and beyond), all as a result of your visit to Highland Cow Cottage.
• Farm diversification: we welcome comments that address the balance between the cattle farming operation and the Highland Cow Cottage leisure and tourism business. How the split is between these two across the site, and that the site still feels primarily like a farm. Our business introduces a broad range of people to farming, looking after livestock, wildlife and the countryside.
• Wildlife and Ecology: since the purchase of the site by the Highland Cow Cottage team, we have managed to enter a number of environmental schemes related to agriculture that ensure that we are farming in an environmentally sustainable way and therefore benefitting the wildlife and ecology of the wider site. There has been a notable increase in wildlife, fauna and flora since we made this our home, so please to comment in these benefits if you can.

Any other comments: of course, if you have any other unique ideas for information that would help support our application, please feel free to include this too!

We are super grateful for any support you can provide and hope this application will allow us to bring the amazing highland cow experience to people for many years to come.

Thank you so much,
Karl and Kelly
(and everyone else on the Highland Cow Cottage team, including our beloved cows!)