Key planning bids to be decided next week

Two high-profile planning bids will be decided by Herefordshire councillors next week.

The project to transform Hereford’s Shirehall into the city’s library and learning centre has been recommended for approval.

Herefordshire Council applied to itself for both planning permission and listed building consent to adapt the early 19th-century, grade II* listed Classical building both inside and out, including demolishing the court services family room, a 1970s addition.

Planning officer Josh Bailey said the proposed main library design “will preserve and enhance the significance of the Assembly Hall”, a former music venue within the building, which has lain largely disused since part of its ceiling in the county’s former Crown Court collapsed in 2020.

Reinstating the ceiling “will realise a significant degree of heritage benefit”, Mr Bailey said, adding that overall, the scheme would “maximise the use of all parts of the building and celebrate its rich heritage”.

The repurposed building will also feature meeting rooms, community skills development areas, heritage interpretation and tours, hireable rooms, and offices for the county coroner and registrars, currently based at the nearby Town Hall.

The council has already appointed international consultancy and construction firm Mace to take the Shirehall project through to the handover stage.

More controversially, councillors will also be asked to decide on a retrospective bid to approve a plant hire business at Lower Woodend farm near Stoke Lacy, between Bromyard and Hereford.

The council had previously attempted to shut the business down via a planning enforcement notice, currently the subject of an appeal.

But following an extraordinary public meeting of Stoke Lacy Parish Council last month attended by the applicants, local councillors said they would back the plan so long as conditions were put on the site’s opening hours and volume of traffic.

Planning officer Jack Dyer said these “adverse impacts can be sufficiently controlled via condition”, and recommended that councillors approve the change of use.

The planning committee meeting will be at Herefordshire Council’s Plough Lane headquarters on Tuesday January 28, and will be shown live on the council’s YouTube channel.