Residents of a Herefordshire farm have again had plans to knock down a farmhouse and replace it with a larger house refused.

Clare Chapman of Millwood Farm near Little Hereford made the application for planning permission at the farm in December.

This showed the planned new house as having an open-plan kitchen and dining room, sitting room, office and utility room on the ground floor, with four bedrooms upstairs.

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There were no objections to the proposal from Brimfield and Little Hereford parish council or from the public.

But planning officer Emma Aram considered that the existing farmhouse “is modest in size and has a distinctive character and is an interesting, prominent feature in the local landscape”.

By contrast the “substantially larger” replacement house would “create a more dominant feature in the landscape that does not incorporate any of the design features of the original dwelling”.

The previous unsuccessful design for a three-bedroom replacement farmhouse on the siteThe previous unsuccessful design for a three-bedroom replacement farmhouse on the site (Image: Keenan Project Designs)

This closely resembled the reasons why a previous bid to build a three-bedroom replacement farmhouse, submitted in February last year, had also been rejected, Ms Aram pointed out.

The date of this previous refusal, December 13, 2023, was just a week before the second proposal was submitted.

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The more recent application “does not overcome the reasons for refusing” the previous one, “as it is even larger in size than the refused dwelling and is considered to have even more of an adverse impact on the character of the area”, Ms Aram concluded.

And following concerns raised by the council’s ecology and highways officers, she noted that the proposal “fails to demonstrate that the development will not have an adverse impact on ecology or highway safety”.

Applicants can appeal against the refusal of permission within six months.