Somerset County Council should have had some idea of the hornets' nest it would stir up when it announced plans to sell off its farms estate – after all, we have been here before when the Tories tried the same thing back in the 1980s and were kicked out of office for their pains.

Perhaps councillors thought claiming there was an overriding case to make the best use of every asset against the need to reduce a £350-million debt burden would convince farmers and the wider public of the necessity of such a course.

Clearly, they underestimated both the passion with which tenants farm their estate – and the public's determination that in a county where agriculture is the primary industry it is only right that the local authority should maintain profitable farms of its own.

The fact that they can be shown – on paper at least – not to have been profitable last year is all down to manipulating the figures, and one councillor has even openly admitted to the NFU that he can make the figures "show anything I want them too".

Unfortunately for the council, delving into the figures has also thrown up the fact that Somerset runs its farms far less efficiently than is the case in neighbouring Devon and Gloucestershire. And that if it used the same accounting methods they do, the annual returns from the estate would be far more impressive than they currently appear.

Yesterday saw the council still shroud-waving over its debt burdens – not of the tenant farmers' making, it should be pointed out – and still trying to justify the partial disposal of the farms in a climate when libraries will be shut and new schools remain unbuilt.

But it is still clear that the protests which arose before the election when the sell-off plans – and the council's clumsily insensitive handling of them – became public knowledge have forced at least a partial climbdown.

This has been nothing less than a public relations disaster for the authority but it now appears to be making a genuine effort to ensure that the majority of land within the estate remains farmed – rather than being sold off for golf courses.

And there is little doubt that, as the negotiations over the estate's future continue, those who led the protest campaign will continue to keep Somerset County Council and its activities under the very closest scrutiny.