An Inverness businessman has criticised Highland Council after they refused retrospective permission for his long-running peat business.
Brian MacGregor has extracted peat from a site near Moy since 1982, every month sending scores of lorries across Scotland and England.
Some of the loads are taken to mushroom growers while others go to maltings.
But when one customer recently asked for details of the provenance of the peat, Mr MacGregor discovered that his planning permission had run out in 1992.
And now council officials have turned down his application for a certificate of lawfulness to cover the operation.
They claim that Mr MacGregor needs planning permission and has not proved that his operations have been running constantly for more than four years, as required.
But the farmer says that planners ignored his request for a meeting to discuss the issue and present years worth of invoices.
He also pointed out that he has paid business rates to the council for many years.
Mr MacGregor said: “I have worked that area for 32 years uninterrupted and with no complaints from neighbours or members of the public.
“I have an established use that has been going on for years.”
Mr MacGregor said that he had three months to appeal the decision to the Scottish Government but wanted to speak to the council to resolve the matter first.
He added that he was due to meet the area’s planning manager Allan Todd today, along with case officer Andrew McCracken and council solicitor Karen Lyons.
In their decision report, Mr McCracken said that Mr MacGregor needed planning permission because it was an operational development.
He also said that Mr MacGregor had failed to provide “sufficient evidence” that the extraction of peat had taken place four years prior to the application.
A Highland Council spokeswoman said: ” The matter is subject to ongoing discussion with the applicant.”