While recognizing that this is a semi-scripted TV show, I think they covered something like that in Season 2, but the attorney fees were even too much for mega-rich Jeremy.
I don't know how anyone gets anything done in the UK. The town council is the face of it, but all the farming rules from the UK government are just brutal.
I'm not sure that I'd call him mega rich. Rich, yes, but his estimated net worth is about $70 million.
The fees to contest the council's denial of his restaurant application were going to be something like $600,000 US dollars, with no guarantee of success.
With my Father having been a land surveyor and civil engineer I saw many instances of local boards deciding to make the land owner's life hell because they can.
One that stands out was a land owner/truck farmer who kept trying to get various projects through the township board of supervisors. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was an immediate reflexive NO! Want to put up a new pole shed for your tractor? NO! Want to expand your house? NO! Want to stand in your front yard and wave to your neighbors? NO!
Supervisors kept saying they didn't want more traffic on the road, didn't want to change the nature of that area of the township (sort of what Clarkson went through with the council), but in this guy's case he had had long-term problems with two of the supervisors over the years and it was a personal revenge for them. Absolute malfeasance on their part.
It finally got so bad that the land owner/truck farmer finally said *expletive deleted*ck it and sold out to a developer who had been after him for years. Supervisors tried their hardest to torpedo that, as well, but the developer absolutely crushed them and about 150 houses went in. Which worked out for my Dad because the developer used him for the surveying and engineering work.
Then the previous land owner/truck farmer sued the members of the board, and in discovery it was proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt (lots of e-mail, crap like that I guess) their personal vendetta against him. Cost the township a LOT of money in the subsequent judgement, which of course was covered by the township's insurance company... which then went after two of the supervisors personally because of their provable bad acts.
Ah... big city politics has nothing on the *expletive deleted*it that can happen in little places out in the middle of nowhere.
