A controversial 23-home development in a Herefordshire village has been dropped.

Solihull-based builder Piper Homes applied two years ago to develop the three-acre field south of the C1051 Tenbury Road, onto which new road access would have to be created.

It said the site had been picked out in the village’s development plan as the preferred one for new housing.

RELATED NEWS:

The scheme was to have “a low-density informal rural layout around a new central area of public open space with child’s play area”, its application said.

Five of the houses were to be for affordable rent with a further three for shared ownership.

The application was considerably revised during the consultation period, with around 30 documents eventually listed as “amended”.

But now the council’s senior planner Kelly Gibbons has told the firm’s agent that the council is treating the application as “finally disposed of” – given that “no recent progress has been made towards addressing the unresolved issues with the proposal”.

What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

It is unclear what these unresolved issues are. The council’s transport officer Katy Jones objected in February to “a lack of pedestrian connectivity” between the development and the village, with a proposed path to the village from its southwest corner “still shown as gravel, which isn’t acceptable for the only pedestrian access into the site”.

But there were no outstanding objections from the council’s landscape, housing and drainage officers, or from Severn Trent water over sewerage.

The scheme did however draw around 50 objections from the public, focussing on flooding and pedestrian access issues.

Diane and Tony Hobbis said there was “a lack of realistic and safe access” to the nearest bus stop at Manor Farm Corner to the west along the narrow C-road – a “busy rat run used to avoid the A49 Salwey junction”.

OTHER NEWS:

And Wendy Brick claimed the flood maps with the application were “not accurate” and that “people who have lived in Brimfield all their lives can testify [that] flooding takes place along this road”.

Brimfield parish council also objected, after what it described as “a well-attended meeting where local residents voiced their strong concerns”.

It marks the third unsuccessful bid in ten years to develop the site.