As bizarre planning farces go, it is off the rails. Organisers behind a community allotment project have been forced to put wheels on a greenhouse to slip through council red tape.

And similar ridiculous regulations could see them attaching an outboard motor to a potting shed to escape a laborious and costly planning process.

The Food for Thought project in Larkhall, Bath, was set up last year to educate children and adults alike in the basic skills of edible crop growing by a return to the old ways of cultivating produce.

It harks back to the time of the celebrated Kitchen Front, when housewives were encouraged by the Government to Grow More Food in an effort to feed a population of 45 million during the Dig for Victory campaign.

But when the project's leaders decided they needed a greenhouse to extend beyond the Second World War range of produce to include garlic, capsicums, chilli peppers and figs, they were hit with an astonishing planning hurdle.

Regulators at Bath and North East Somerset Council demanded they go through the process of applying for planning permission for both the greenhouse and potting shed, pay a sum of several hundred pounds and wait months for approval.

David Laming, who runs a boatyard at Keynsham, and Cllr Bryan Chalker started thinking of ways to outfox the penpushers and soon hit upon the idea of turning the structures into mobile 'vehicles' instead of buildings.

Having quizzed the planners on whether this would circumvent the regulations and being told it would, they set about retrieving some heavy-duty wheels to mount the greenhouse on.

Mr Laming said: "It's crazy. If we had wanted to put the greenhouse up as a fixed structure we would have had to pay £160, complete detailed plans, make six copies of all the documents and wait months for the planners to get round to passing approval.

"When you think that the council has provided a grant of £4,000 for this project but we would then have to pay them for the privilege of having a greenhouse, it's just farcical.

"The same rules apparently apply to our little six by four potting shed, but if they say anything about that I will attach an outboard engine to it and turn it into a marine potting shed and sail it down to Larkhall village to get the shopping."

Cllr Chalker said that it had taken a great deal of innovation and diplomacy to get round the planning issue.

He said: "The project even got personal backing from the gardener Carol Klein, who thought the whole wheels farce was hilarious. This initiative started off with residents working alongside St Mark's School and has just snowballed into a fantastic community project.

"We've planted fruit trees, herb gardens and created a reconstituted pond which harks back to Georgian times, while collecting hundreds of artefacts from when there were artisan cottages here in Victorian times which are to go on display at the school.

"It's ridiculous to think this could all have been jeopardised by red tape and I'm glad we've got around it.

"I look forward to seeing the garden develop over the next few years."

A spokesman for Bath and North East Somerset Council said: "The planning system can sometimes seem complex, especially to those using it for the first time.

"The proposed greenhouse/shed as originally proposed did require planning permission since the structures, considered to be buildings, represent development as set out in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

"However, a moveable structure, i.e. something on wheels that can easily be moved about, is not a building and not therefore development."