A plan to sell off seven very different properties and pieces of land around Herefordshire for development has been backed by council leaders.

A cabinet meeting of Herefordshire Council yesterday (December 14) agreed that the council should get rid of:

  • The Broad Street car park in Leominster. Plans are already under way to move the fire station from here to the police station south of the town, while the council proposed last year turning the car park into “a mixed retail/housing scheme”.
  • The former Ashfields highways depot in Hereford Road, Bromyard, for which the council awarded a lease in April to a car trader, but whose planning application was later withdrawn;
  • Further land described as “grazing land” at the Bromyard depot;
  • Churchill House, the grade II listed home of the former Churchill Gardens Museum in Aylestone Hill, Hereford;
  • The Broadlands Lane paddock by Aylestone School, which has access issues;
  • The nearby 1 Lugg View Cottage on Broadlands Lane;
  • And the former Holme Lacy primary school site, which closed as a school in 2012 and has been earmarked for redevelopment for some time.

The seven “vary from small plots that might benefit local homeowners and small businesses, to larger plots that will enable housing development”, cabinet member for finance Coun Pete Stoddart told the meeting.

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Money raised from their sale “could to be redirected to fund other capital projects that are in line with the council’s priorities”, he said, adding: “We are investigating other ways these sites may be developed.”

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Former council leader Coun David Hitchiner of the Independents for Herefordshire said the council must ensure “community as well as financial benefits” if the Holme Lacy site in particular were to be sold to a developer.

Coun Stoddart also outlined a £7.3 million spending package starting next April to be funded by borrowing, including £1.5 million to make schools more accessible, £424,000 for residential homes for 11-18-year-olds, £550,000 for improvements to care homes, and £1.4 million for new council software.

Any changes to the council’s capital spending plans will have to be approved by a budget-setting meeting of all councillors in February.