A plan to build five houses on the edge of a Herefordshire village has been refused for a second time.

The three three-bedroom and two four-bedroom stone-clad houses would have been built on a three-acre field to the south of Upton Crews near Ross-on-Wye.

Part of the plan was to create a new native woodland with glades, and a small traditional orchard.

According to the application, an earlier proposal at the site had been refused planning permission solely because the drainage plan was ruled inadequate. This new application addressed this, it said, but was otherwise alike.

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But planning officer Heather Carlisle judged it still fell short on this.

Based on comments by the council’s drainage engineer, she said the proposed “infiltration basin” has been designed using an “unacceptable” infiltration rate.

It also “proposed to discharge foul water via a drainage mound on an unsuitable location on impermeable ground” near the infiltration basin.

Nor was there enough detail on the drainage mounds, or on the proposed planting to mitigate and enhance the development.

It would therefore “cause unjustified harm to the wider landscape”, she ruled.

Upton Bishop parish council, having considered the amended application at an extraordinary meeting in December, again objected to it, saying it lay outside of settlement boundaries, while it was concerned the infiltration basin was “potentially dangerous to the public”.

More than 80 objections were also lodged.