Jeremy Clarkson warns new council row leaves 300 jobs in jeopardy as Clarkson’s Farm star says ‘we’ve begged’

The latest dispute centres on a supply of hardcore that Mr Clarkson was offered during the summer months, which he wanted to use at his pub.

The idea would be to spread it across the field that is currently acting as his pub’s car park to prevent it from becoming waterlogged through the winter.

However, Mr Clarkson has said that the council has failed to respond to his requests for approval.

Writing in The Sunday Times, Mr Clarkson admitted growing frustrated now that rain and storms have begun to batter Britain.

“I’m sitting here today, with the rain falling, and we can’t get permission. We’ve rung. We’ve begged. We’ve pleaded,” Mr Clarkson penned.

“We’ve explained that if we don’t do the work now, we will lose the hardcore and, all winter, our customers will be dragging tons of mud onto the roads. And all we get back is silence,” he wrote.

The presenter explained that the offer of the material had been time-limited, meaning he’d have to act fast. But in a swipe against the council, he commented: “Urgency, however, is not a word that’s fully understood by local authorities.”

Referring to his previous clashes, Mr Clarkson warned ominously that “it’s going to kick off all over again.”

But it’s not just the pub that Mr Clarkson says he’s having a hard time with when it comes to liaising with the authorities.

Mr Clarkson has also revealed that his farm shop faces similar obstacles, as the business is still awaiting clarity from the council on what activities will be permitted on the property going forward.

“Nearly 300 people are employed by my various enterprises these days. And all of them want to know if their jobs are secure,” Mr Clarkson wrote.

“So too do the owners of all the cafés, antique shops and guesthouses in the area who rely on Diddly Squat’s popularity for much of their business.

“And all we can ever tell them is, ‘We don’t know,'” he said.

Mr Clarkson hit out at the politics behind the situation, claiming there was “no doubt that the planning system in this country is broken, and I suspect it’s because far too many people are invited to have an opinion on each application”.

And his gripes in recent weeks haven’t been limited to politics at a local level.

Mr Clarkson has publicly ridiculed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, admitting that he sees the Labour leader as “out of his depth” when it comes to running the country.

“He’d be fine on a local council, organising bus timetables and sorting out neighbourhood leylandii issues, but I worry that he might be slightly out of his depth when faced with anything bigger and more important than that.

“It’s why I always call him Councillor Burnham,” the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire presenter shared in his latest column of The Sun.

Continuing his public show of no confidence, Mr Clarkson went on: “He thinks he can impose lots of new rules and laws because in his provincial, small, unicorn world of biscuits and niceness, Dixon is still on the beat in Dock Green. So they can all be enforced. But they can’t.

“We are living in troubled times, and it would be better, I think, if we had a Prime Minister who recognises that instead of worrying about unfair parking tickets and P Diddy noises, the local council can do that.”