Controversial 16-home Ross scheme approved

A plan for 16 new homes in a Herefordshire town has finally been given the go-ahead, despite local opposition going back years.

The bid for outline permission to develop the acre-and-a-half paddock south of Ross-on-Wye town centre, with full permission for access onto Merrivale Lane, was submitted in April 2020.

It proposes six two-bedroom, nine three-bedroom and one four-bedroom houses, six of which would be “social” units. Each would have two parking spaces.

The layout would “reflect the prevailing housing densities within the locality”, the application said. A sustainable urban drainage strategy was also submitted for the “steeply sloping” site, at the recommendation of Welsh Water.

It would also bring a contribution of £86,000 to local services including education, transport, health and sports facilities.

An earlier proposal for 10 houses on the same site was submitted in October 2018. But Herefordshire Council said then that it would prefer a greater number and mix of homes, including affordable housing.

The smaller number of homes would also not have required the developer to make an infrastructure contribution.

In December 2019, the council told the applicant, the Ruth Lilian McQueen Keohane Discretionary Trust, to withdraw the application or have it refused.

Neither the earlier nor the current proposal has proved popular locally.

Eighteen objections, mainly concerning traffic and parking, were submitted to the current bid, on top of the 20 opposing the original ten-home plan.

Many said that Merrivale Lane was already “a rat-run”, used by lorries and farm machinery as well as local cars, yet often reduced to a single lane due to parking.

One said that increasing the number of proposed houses over the original site proposal “adds insult to injury”.

Ross Town Council put forward no objections, but asked for existing trees and hedgerows to be retained, which was made a condition of the approval.

A detailed application for the scheme must now be submitted for approval within three years.