A farmer’s son who plans to join the family business has won his fight to build a new house on their land after councillors dismissed claims living there was not essential.

Andrew Meikle had applied for planning permission for a family home at Hoprig Farm, near Gladsmuir, so he can help his brother run the farm when their dad retires.

However, an independent report by an agriculture consultant into the need for a new house for his family to live on the farm questioned the number of labourers needed to work it and whether it was necessary for him to stay there.

The report by Laurence Gould Partnership was requested by East Lothian councillors after Mr Meikle appealed to the council’s Local Review Body to decide his application for a new house, due to officers taking too long to decide the application.

But at a meeting of the review body on Monday, the consultant’s claims that only two people were needed to work the 1,000-acre farmland included in the business, and that there was no need for him to live on the farm itself, were dismissed.

Councillor Donna Collins, chairing the meeting, told fellow members she has been running her family farm alone for 17 years but it was a tenth of the size of the Meikle farm.

And she said it was not uncommon to work 18 hour days meaning the idea of then having to drive any distance home was a health and safety risk.

Councillor Collins told the board she drove her first tractor aged five and was bringing in the harvest by the age of 12.

She said: “It is a tough life. As farmers you are always chasing the weather and need to be able to react to bring in the harvest at the right time in an the right conditions which can mean working 18 or 20 hour days to get it done.

“It is long hours and if you do not have the right amount of people on site to make sure you get breaks that is when accidents can happen.”

The review body unanimously agreed to support the appeal and grant permission for the house.

Hoprig Mains Farm was the home of the founder of the Scottish Women's Rural Institute Catherine Blair who lived there at the start of the 20th century.

As well as establishing the ‘Rural’ in Scotland, Catherine gave refuge to suffragette prisoners hiding from the law at the farm, when they were released under the notorious Cat and Mouse Act which saw them sent home from prison when they became unwell from refusing to eat but jailed again once they had recovered.