A plan to build eight new houses in Hereford has been refused because of its “poor” design and layout.

Mr A Thomas of local firm Buildworx had sought permission to build four pairs of semi-detached homes for market sale off Gorsty Lane, Tupsley to the east of the city.

Approval for seven homes on the same site was previously granted in 2020, and access onto Gorsty Lane has been put in place on that basis.

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Hereford Civic Society claimed this earlier plan “represents the maximum number of dwellings that can be sustainably accommodated on the site”.

And Herefordshire Council’s highways engineer said the new plan’s “poor layout could lead to long term amenity problems for future residents”.

Planning officer Simon Rowles agreed that the plan was “overly intensive and fails to represent good design” as set out in county and national standards.

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The planned cul-de-sac also suffered from “a poorly designed, cramped and contrived parking layout”, with “parking across neighbours’ frontages, remote parking spaces and lengthy, awkward reversing manoeuvres”, he said.

“Increased housing density should not be achieved at the expense of good design,” he concluded.

But he pointed out the seven-home scheme remains “the fall-back position”.

UPDATE: the image accompanying this story was changed to show the layout which was objected to.