PLANNING applications on two neighbouring plots that could have seen eight news homes being built in a Wye Valley National Landscape village have been refused.

The plots involve sites adjacent to Delburne Farm and the Stoney Hill Industrial Estate in Whitchurch.

The one beside the industrial estate targeted four homes on an irregularly shaped plot in a field opposite two dwelling houses.

However, the site is in agricultural use outside the Settlement Boundary, and Herefordshire Council planners ruled that the proposals encroached into the open countryside and harmed the national landscape area.

Despite accepting that it formed part of a cluster of existing development including residential properties, the industrial estate and the adjacent petrol station, planners also raised concerns over the proposed architectural approach.

“The proposed bungalows are of a standardised design with brick to the principal elevations, incorporating limited architectural detailing that does not generally reflect local building traditions and would feel more in keeping with a market town urban extension,” they said.

The proposed site on land next to Delburne Farm is also an irregularly shaped parcel of land used for grazing beside a group of 10 homes at Gilpin Way.

The planners said the housing units were too large, not ‘wayside cottages’, and would need to be cut harshly into the steep topography landscape.

The planning report stated: “The development is further encroachment into the open countryside, being beyond the village’s settlement boundary, and would obscure part of the landscape access to the Wye Valley National Landscape Area via the footpath network, which passes directly adjacent to the site.”

Planning officer Josh Bailey concluded: “The benefits of the proposal, including the delivery of four dwellings and associated economic and social benefits, would be significantly and demonstrably outweighed by the adverse impacts identified.”

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