A small Somerset co-operative is trying to set up its own off-grid community, but can it combat local objections and technological challenges?
Tucked away down a farm track in Somerset, a small group of people are putting their hearts and souls into a project that they hope will act as a catalyst for an era of low-cost, off-grid rural living. At the moment, however, all they have is a field, a barn, and a fat sheaf of planning application forms. The dream drawn out in detail in the documents is of an entire off-grid community. Those already exist, of course. But the Plotgate off-gridders hope that they will be the first group to establish an off-grid community with full pre-granted planning permission.
A few years ago Somerset council sold off a few of its farms. This one - Plotgate Farm - was bought for £142,000 by Chris Black who has already enabled several off-grid settlements in the area. It was Black who bought the land for Tinkers Bubble, a 40-acre off-grid settlement in woodland that won its own planning battle after it was launched 20 years ago. "I want to make living in the countryside available to people who would not otherwise be able to, he says. After living at the Bubble for a while, he bought himself a house nearby, and invited a number of bus dwellers to drive their vehicles on to his land. Having tired of this novel way of annoying the neighbours, Black bought another field, known as Kingshill, and to his surprise managed to persuade his many guests to decamp there with their vehicles. Even more surprising the bus dwellers managed to win planning permission, at the European court, on grounds of human rights.
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