A Northern Ireland politician has put farm diversification planning reform on the legislative agenda, calling out the gap between government rhetoric encouraging farmers to diversify and a planning system that routinely blocks them from doing so.

Ulster Unionist MLA Diana Armstrong, representing Fermanagh and South Tyrone, has written to ministers in three portfolios, raised the matter in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and contacted Airbnb directly, arguing that farmers are being told to innovate but denied the structural support to act on it.

The Planning Barrier

Armstrong’s central complaint is that Northern Ireland’s Planning Policy Statement 21 (PPS 21) restricts farm diversification by tying approvals tightly to existing farm activities and limiting new buildings to narrow circumstances. She argues this creates a system where viable business ideas are effectively killed at the planning stage, not on their commercial merits.

She contrasted this with England, where planners are now instructed to give substantial weight to farm diversification proposals, treating them as opportunities rather than applications to be minimised.

Armstrong has asked the Infrastructure Minister to review whether planning policy could be amended to extend the same weight to diversification proposals in Northern Ireland.

The Funding Gap

Armstrong also highlighted the closure of the Rural Development Programme at the end of 2023, which had funded farm diversification, rural tourism, and small business grants across Northern Ireland. As of October 2026, nearly three years after that programme closed, no funded successor has been introduced.

She pointed to Airbnb’s Rural Tourism Fund, which provides 200,000 euros for rural tourism projects in the Republic of Ireland, with individual grants of up to 20,000 euros available to community groups and small businesses. The fund currently excludes Northern Ireland, despite Northern Ireland’s Fermanagh region being marketed under the same “Ireland’s Hidden Heartlands” tourism brand as counties where applicants are eligible.

Armstrong has written to Airbnb asking whether the fund could be extended to Northern Ireland and the wider United Kingdom, while making clear that she views private corporate funding as an inadequate substitute for a functioning government programme.

She has also asked the Economy Minister how promotional investment in the Lough Erne region will be matched by on-the-ground infrastructure improvements, and the Agriculture Minister when a replacement for the Rural Development Programme will be delivered.

What This Means for WA Operators

The Northern Ireland situation is a useful structural comparison for WA agritourism operators, because the core tension, being actively encouraged to diversify while the planning system works against you, is not unique to Fermanagh.

WA operators working through development applications for new farm stay accommodation, cellar doors, or visitor facilities will recognise the dynamic Armstrong describes: a policy environment that talks up diversification but treats individual applications as containment exercises. The specific instrument is different in WA (Development Control Policies and local government planning schemes rather than PPS 21), but the friction point is the same.

Armstrong’s approach offers a practical model. She has not waited for a single solution; she has simultaneously pursued planning reform, lobbied for a private sector funding extension, and asked multiple ministers on the record when specific actions will be taken. That multi-track pressure is replicable regardless of jurisdiction.

The funding gap she identifies is also relevant here. WA operators currently have access to state and federal grant programmes, but those programmes have finite rounds and shifting eligibility criteria. Armstrong’s situation illustrates what happens when a primary funding mechanism closes and no replacement is designed in advance: a three-year vacuum that private philanthropy cannot fill at scale. Operators who are dependent on a single grant programme to finance diversification infrastructure should treat that as a business continuity risk, not just a timing inconvenience.

The Airbnb Rural Tourism Fund itself is not available in WA. Its structure, community and small-business grants of up to 20,000 euros delivered through a private corporate fund, is worth noting as a model that corporations with rural tourism exposure have been willing to fund elsewhere. Whether a similar mechanism could be negotiated with a relevant platform or industry partner in the WA context is a question worth raising collectively rather than individually.

WAAA exists to carry exactly this kind of advocacy work on behalf of WA operators, pushing for planning frameworks that treat farm diversification as an asset rather than a compliance problem, and tracking funding gaps before they become crises. That work is faster and more effective with more members behind it. WAAA is a small, volunteer-led organisation, and it is honest about that, but the model Armstrong is using in Northern Ireland, a single, persistent voice asking ministers for specific commitments on record, is precisely what a peak body can do that individual operators cannot easily do alone.