It's Our County (IOC) is an independent local political party, founded in 2010 on the principles of openness and accountability. Since 2015 we have been the largest opposition group on Herefordshire Council - a remarkable feat in just 5 years. Our councillors come from a wide range of backgrounds and are just ordinary working people committed to serving their communities and delivering the best future for the county. 

Our councillors fund our party from their own pockets, so our financial resources are very limited. We feel passionately that the sale of all Herefordshire's publicly owned farms is wrong. We are concerned at the way the decision has been handled by the council and our concern is shared by our tenant farmers and by many local residents. Through 'Crowd Justice' we want to raise the funds we need to use the Judicial Review process to challenge the council's unconstitutional decision to sell its entire farm estate.

Herefordshire is a diverse agricultural county - hops, yoghurt, beef, apples, cheese, chickens, strawberries, pork, asparagus, lamb - you name it, we grow it. Council-owned farms are the only means by which ordinary people have a hope of getting a foot on the farming ladder. As a result of the council's mishandled decision, the livelihoods and homes of almost 50 tenant farmers and their families are immediately at stake, as well as the future farming careers of generations to come.

The Herefordshire case has had plenty of national media coverage including BBC1's Countryfile, Radio 4's Farming Today, and the national, and farming press. Much of this coverage has centred on the council's mishandling of the decision process including its decision to withhold key information from the statutory scrutiny process. This included the council providing a heavily redacted version of its own external consultant's report; redaction which concealed the report's clear recommendation that the majority of the estate should be retained.

We've taken legal advice and, if we can raise the funds to instruct a specialist barrister, we believe there's a good chance that the farm estate could be kept in public ownership.

Thanks to your pledges we've already raised first target of £3,500 to cover costs for a specialist barrister to assess the case and advise on how to proceed. We now need to raise the rest of the £15,000 needed if the case is to be successfully taken forward to Judicial Review. 

Please help us to secure a route into farming for future generations.