THE FUTURISTIC conversion of two traditional stone barns into a business centre, heated by willow grown on his farm, has won farmer Gareth Gaunt a major award.

Michael Meacher, the Environment Minister, yesterday visited his Paddock House Farm at Sicklinghall, near Wetherby, to present the CLA's Yorkshire Farm and Country Building Awards.

The Minister and other guests watched as some of the 150 acres of willow coppice was harvested, before touring the Nordic style office accomodation to see the latest technology heating system which uses willow chips.

The Carlshead business office complex is now home to a high-tech software firm, the Program Management Group.

Mr Gaunt is vice-chairman of the Renewable Energy Growers' Group, is a qualified vet, and has another business breeding horses for polo and polocrosse.

The business complex cost £500,000 to create. The heating system for the offices and two farmhouses cost about £50,000. The special 100kw boiler uses 100 to 120 tonnes of willow chips a year. It is fed from a hopper which is refilled each week.

Mark Hudson, CLA deputy president, said the Carlshead project was an outstanding example of the potential of green, clean, renewable energy from Britain's countryside which the CLA's "Demand Farmed Fuels" campaign was vigorously promoting.

The UK will fall well short of the Government's goal for reducing carbon dioxide emissions - the main greenhouse gas - according to a recent audit of its climate change programme by the Sustainable Development Commission.

Three other Yorkshire schemes also won awards in the biennial competition. They included a new estate office at Escrick Park, near York, where rainwater is collected and treated for use as drinking water by staff as there is no mains supply; the conversion of derelict and redundant stables into offices at Aske, near Richmond, which created up to 100 new jobs; and a sensitively-built new development to extend the Bolton Abbey estate offices near Skipton.

Commendations went to a remote, disused field barn at the foot of Horse Head Pass, near Halton Gill, transformed into a bunkhouse for visitors, and the smithy at Brodsworth, near Doncaster, converted from a ruin to a three-bedroomed cottage for letting