Six homes to replace village cottage as approval granted
A plan to replace a poorly built cottage in a village with six new houses has been passed, a year and a half after being submitted.
Oak Cottage, off the main A4113 High Street through Leintwardine, was approved in 2010 but when built was found not to meet building regulations.
A planning application from Marches Homes of Hereford in June last year proposed knocking it down and building six three-bedroom dormer bungalows on the site, each with south-facing pitched roofs.
Leintwardine Group Parish Council objected for a number of reasons including the potential harm to a veteran roadside oak, which it described as “possibly the oldest living thing in Leintwardine”.
But an undertaking to re-route the road access onto the High Street and to keep utilities clear of the tree’s root area were enough to allay the fears, Herefordshire Council’s tree officer said.
Such a “back-fill development… is not to be encouraged in this historic village”, the parish added.
Among four members of the public to object, Melissa Lewis in a neighbouring cottage said the “overbearing” scheme would “introduce noise, light pollution and nuisance” and would leave her grade II listed cottage “surrounded by a housing estate”.
The frame of the “eco-friendly” Oak Cottage had only been erected in 2018, she added.
Planning office Andrew Banks concluded that while demolishing such a recently built house was “regrettable”, there were “no fundamental policy objections” to this, and that the scheme within the village boundary met all other planning policy requirements.
