A large, complex and long-delayed Herefordshire housing plan will finally be decided on next week.
Bovis Homes, now part of Vistry Group, applied more than seven years ago for outline permission for up to 250 homes on the 12-hectare Hardwick Bank site immediately west of Bromyard, earmarked for development in the main county plan.
Their proposal, now consisting of 126 documents and 127 drawings, includes public open space, play areas, drainage basins and room for the neighbouring St Peter’s Primary School to expand.
Though large, the scheme is just half the size of the developer’s original plan for up to 500 homes on land extending as far as Tenbury Road to the east.
Half of the houses would be classed as affordable, which the council’s strategic housing team has welcomed – though they continue to object to the proposed blocks of single-bedroom flats within the scheme which they said would attract anti-social behaviour and are not what is needed locally.
Despite multiple consultations, the council’s highways officer Katy Jones has numerous outstanding concerns including children’s access to the town’s high school across the A44, which she said rendered the application “only just about acceptable”.
She had “tried on a number of occasions to get the applicant to make the required amendments but the applicant has been unwilling to co-operate”, she wrote.
Nonetheless planning case officer Ollie Jones is recommending that the council’s planning committee approve the plan, though with a list of 36 associated conditions.
Councillors will make the decision on the morning of Wednesday January 17.
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