Nine-home scheme for hamlet passed

Locals have pleaded in vain to county chiefs to stop a housing development they say will swamp their Herefordshire hamlet.

In March a Mr Mills, resident locally, applied for full planning permission for nine detached and semi-detached houses on a field in Woonton southeast of Kington. With numerous local objections, it was passed to Herefordshire Council’s planning committee to decide this week.

Chris Cates, speaking “on behalf of 18 other residents who have lodged objections”, told the committee it was a “poor speculative development with no regard for its location”, and that with nine homes it “is deliberately under the [ten-home] limit for provision of any social or affordable housing”, nor were any improvements to local infrastructure being offered.

With new 17 homes already granted permission in Woonton since 2021, “the hamlet has now doubled in size” – though of the 17, “four are unfinished and a further seven are unsold”, he added.

Local parish councillor Michael Handley described this as “a rate of growth which would not be tolerated anywhere else in Herefordshire”.

Meanwhile the 24 parking spaces proposed would mean an increase in traffic movements locally of “roughly 150 per cent”.

The developer’s agent Russell Pryce said that with its “mix of barn-style dwellings and rural farmhouses, generous gardens and ample parking”, the planned cul-de-sac development “forms a logical extension of the village”.

The same planning committee had already approved a five-home development on the same site (later overturned by a judicial review and then refused at appeal), while the county’s “deficit in housing supply is growing”, he pointed out.

Picking up on this, local ward member Coun Roger Highfield said councillors “are under pressure to approve planning applications wherever possible as long as they’re not ridiculous”.

But with no shop, school or church, the historic hamlet has already “almost become a new town” in recent years. And the county “needs to be fair in how new housing shared out” and should not be building “willy-nilly on good agricultural land”, he added.

But Coun Bruce Baker considered the scheme “at the top of the scale” design-wise, “unlike red-brick monstrosities we’ve recently had to approve”.

His motion to approve the scheme was passed by six votes to two, with four abstentions.