The laughter of small children and the easy rhythm of glasses clinking on a sweltering Kent afternoon should have been music to the ears of any restaurateur. But James Green, the man behind the Whitstable Oyster Fishery Company, cut a distinctly uncomfortable figure as he surveyed the bustling terrace of his seaside establishment.
“I don’t like to use the term, but it is nimbyism,” Green said, his frustration palpable. “Why did it become personal? I don’t know really. Because we’re a family business, it’s a relatively small town?”
At 58, Green is the custodian of a commercial institution whose origins stretch back to 1793. He inherited the directorship from his late father, Barrie, and has spent the better part of two decades transforming what was once a struggling single-employee outfit into a multimillion-pound enterprise that harvests roughly two million oysters annually from the seabeds of north Kent.
Now, however, he finds himself at the centre of a bitter planning row that has laid bare deep tensions between a dynastic family business and the close-knit coastal community it dominates.
A Seafood Empire on the Shore
The WOFC controls a substantial stretch of Whitstable’s shoreline and operates four seafront restaurants alongside a hotel. It is Green’s application to expand one of those venues — the Forge oyster shack — on to a neighbouring strip of beach, currently used to store boats by members of the Whitstable Yacht Club, that has triggered the latest furore.
The proposals are modest in physical terms: timber decking and a pergola to create additional seating where diners could enjoy “half a dozen oysters and a glass of muscadet” with sand between their toes. But locals have reacted with anything but moderation.
More than 200 individual objections have been logged since the planning application was submitted in June. Among them are submissions from the Environment Agency, which has raised concerns about the potential impact on coastal flood defences.
Critics have not held back. One resident branded the scheme “a carbuncle.” Another described it as “a horrifying visual, physical and commercial intrusion.” A third simply called it “disastrous.”
A Community on the Defensive
The objections go beyond aesthetics. The Whitstable Beach Campaign, a residents’ group previously instrumental in blocking the company’s metal oyster racks nearly a decade ago, has once again taken up arms. Its spokesperson, Paul McNally, insisted there was no justification for any encroachment on to the beach.
“Our remit, for many years, has been a simple one — to protect the unspoilt nature of Whitstable beach and maintain public access to it,” McNally said. “Both of which would be compromised by the current development proposal.”
Green Party councillor Stuart Heaver, who represents part of the town, said the strength of feeling reflected something deeper than mere planning concerns.
“People are highly protective of the beach, and it’s a maritime town,” he explained. “It is a close-knit community and people get very excited when people try to alter things. I have met James Green a few times, a perfectly sensible and nice fellow, but there is a history in the town of a little bit of friction between the company and local residents.”
History of Hostility
The friction is not new. In 2018, the Greens fought a gruelling and expensive battle to retain the thousands of metal racks strung along the seabed on which they cultivate non-native Pacific rock oysters — a commercial venture begun in 2008 by Green’s sons, James and Richard, that effectively rebuilt the town’s reputation as an oyster capital.
Green reportedly spent £1m on the planning application for the racks. Five years ago, the company was also rebuffed in an earlier licensing bid to extend the Forge’s seating, partly due to fierce opposition — including, at the time, from the Whitstable Yacht Club itself.
The club, which leases the stretch of beach in question from the WOFC, has since had a change of heart. Offered more favourable lease terms in exchange for surrendering some space, it has now withdrawn its objection.
But the broader ill will persists. A district judge who considered an earlier appeal against Canterbury city council’s refusal of the company’s plans wrote that Green, “an able and determined businessman who through force of will and personality drives forward his projects to commercial success,” had nonetheless “generated some public animosity towards him personally.” Green and his company had become “the source of tension, even open hostility, with some within the local community.”
A Question of National Character
Green, who employs 200 people through the business, believes the dispute speaks to something larger than one seaside town and one patch of beach. He detects a deeper “general antipathy” towards commercial enterprise in Britain, and what he sees as a lack of realism about the pressures facing coastal economies.
“I think this country has a problem with commercial enterprises and expansion maybe,” he argued. “And people don’t like change. Maybe we are perceived as quite a big company in a small town.”
The romantic appeal of Whitstable as “Britain’s Oysteropolis” is itself a relatively modern construction. In 1865, more than 100 boats worked the local waters, harvesting some 80 million oysters annually for Billingsgate market. By the 1970s, overfishing, pollution and disease carried by imported stock had gutted the industry. It was Barrie Green’s 1976 purchase of the then-moribund WOFC that began the long road back.
Now his son is determined to press ahead, whatever the objections.
“The Whitstable economy is based on tourism, like it or lump it,” Green said bluntly. “In this day and age you have to do things that are going to make it somewhere people want to go. To me, it is completely bonkers that it shouldn’t be supported. I am not looking to build flats on the beach — it’s decking and a pergola, for fuck’s sake.”
Why it Matters
This row is about more than a few square metres of decking on a Kent beach. It is a microcosm of the friction playing out across Britain’s coastal towns, where family-owned commercial enterprises often hold enormous sway over both the landscape and the local economy. The Whitstable case lays bare the awkward question of who truly owns the seaside — the historic businesses that have shaped it, or the residents who feel entitled to its unspoilt character. With planning decisions still pending and more than 200 objections on file, the outcome will set a precedent for how far legacy firms can expand in communities that have come to depend on them, yet increasingly resent them.
