A plan to knock down a flood-prone Hereford house and replace it with a new property raised on columns has been approved.
Graham Bell of 32 Greyfriars Avenue, beside Hereford Rowing Club and its adjoining campsite a short way from the river Wye, said in his application for planning permission earlier this year that his current home “is currently effectively condemned, along with much of the street”, following “recurrent and devastating flood damage”.
His proposed new home was to sit on a similar footprint to the existing house, and would echo the proportions of the mid-20th-century street. But the ground floor was to be used for car and cycle parking only.
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His application added he hoped the plan would “act as a catalyst for a resurrection of the street, which is currently facing unprecedented destruction as a result of extreme annual flooding”.
There were no public objections to his plan.
But Herefordshire Council’s senior building conservation officer Conor Ruttledge objected to the loss of a property “which forms part of an intended architectural group” and which “makes a positive contribution” to the Hereford central conservation area – something the application had failed to address.
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Planning officer Elsie Morgan acknowledged that demolishing the house and replacing it with a contemporary design “would cause a degree of harm to the character and significance of the conservation area”.
But this would be “outweighed by the improved living conditions, raising floor levels above potential flooding and securing viable residential use of the site for future use”, she concluded.
The nearby Fryers Gate apartment block, completed in 2017 between the rowing club and the city’s main Greyfriars bridge, is already raised on concrete columns to avert flood damage.
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