The costs of incidents on urban fringe farms: a planning problem?

Several surveys have investigated the nature of farming under urban fringe conditions but none, until now, have involved the continuous monitoring of criminal and civil law incidents over a period of time. This paper describes the results of such a survey on urban fringe farms between Tyneside and Sunderland in North‐East England. The analysis outlines the nature of offences which occurred, the type of offender, the time incurred by and cost of the incident to the farmer. The cost of the offences should determine how many resources are devoted to remedying the problem, e.g. in modifying local plans.