A plan to replace a poorly built cottage in a Herefordshire village with six new houses has been passed, a year and a half after being submitted.

Oak Cottage, off the main A4113 High Street through Leintwardine, was approved in 2010 but when built was found not to meet building regulations.

A planning application by Marches Homes of Hereford in June last year proposed knocking it down and building six three-bedroom dormer bungalows on the site, each with south-facing pitched roofs.

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Leintwardine group parish council objected to this for a number of reasons including the potential harm to a veteran roadside oak, which it described as “possibly the oldest living thing in Leintwardine”.

But an undertaking to reroute the road access onto the High Street and to keep utilities clear the tree’s root area were enough to allay these fears, Herefordshire Council’s tree officer said.

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Such a “back-fill development… is not to be encourage (sic) in this historic village”, the parish added.

Among four members of the public to object, Melissa Lewis in the neighbouring Plough Cottage said the “overbearing” scheme would “introduce noise, light pollution and nuisance” and would leave her grade II listed cottage “surrounded by a housing estate”.

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The frame of the “eco-friendly” Oak Cottage had only been erected in 2018, she added.

Planning office Andrew Banks concluded that while demolishing such a recently built house was “regrettable”, there were “no fundamental policy objections” to this, and that the scheme within the village boundary met all other planning policy requirements.