'Overbearing' village house rejected

Plans for a four-bedroom home that would have “stood out like a sore thumb” in the Herefordshire village have been refused.

Planning officers had recommended approving the proposal to build the house in the garden of a neighbouring house in the village of Orcop Hill.

Outline permission had already granted in 2017 for a three-bedroom bungalow set further back from the road.

The new house would share road access with a three-home development, The Trees, recently completed next door, and would have its own packaged sewage treatment plant.

Orcop Parish Council vice-chairman Jane Rigler said the parish council “strongly objected” to the plan, as it would overlook neighbours and “stand out like a sore thumb” among the area’s existing “low-rise” housing.

Fellow parish councillor Barry Shaw, a retired engineer whose home faces the site, said drainage “is a major concern for Orcop Hill”, and questioned claims by a drainage engineer submitted with the application that the site does not have a high water table.

He claimed the proposed house, recessed into the sloping ground, “is guaranteed to be flooded by rising ground water”, and considered the overall drainage provisions “unsafe”.

A further 18 objections were lodged locally.

Ward councillor Toni Fagan said she considered the proposed drainage scheme did not satisfy concerns that waste from the site could flow into nearby water courses and so into the protected river Wye.

The community “accepts that a house will be built on this site, but there is unanimous opinion that it should be low-rise”, she said, adding that the developer had failed to engage with their concerns.

Fellow councillor Felicity Norman said the problem of developers refusing to discuss proposals with communities “comes up endlessly”, adding: “So much can be sorted out through dialogue.”

Coun William Wilding, meanwhile, criticised the lack of forward thinking in the building’s design, saying it “looked like it came from a side-street in Romford 20 years ago”.

But a statement from the applicant’s agent, read at the meeting, said concerns over the size, loss of privacy, along with “a myriad other concerns” about highways impact, drainage, flooding, ecology and landscape, had been dealt with by the council’s planning officer, and were “entirely groundless”.

The “modest” proposal “provides an ideal opportunity to reduce the local (housing) under-supply”, the statement said.

However, the planning committee refused the motion by nine votes to four.