Plan to replace farm buildings in Herefordshire

A Herefordshire farm is seeking permission to knock down redundant buildings and replace them with houses.

Tillington Fruit Farm gained permission earlier this year to convert the buildings on Crowmoor Lane near Burghill, which previously housed a packing shed and cold store, into five houses.

But now the farm has proposed replacing the buildings with three “high-quality and energy-efficient” homes around a landscaped courtyard.

Their “contemporary agrarian” design would employ traditional materials of brick, timber and slate, the farm’s new application says.

Each would have three bedrooms, roof-mounted solar panels and air-source heat pumps coupled with high insulation.

The conversion plan would remain as a fallback if the plan to rebuild were to be refused, the application explains.

But as the existing buildings “lack architectural and historic value, and would not enhance the character of the landscape”, this would not be “the most beneficial outcome”, it suggests.

Comments  the application, numbered 233046, can be made until November 7.