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A plan for five four-bedroom homes at a Herefordshire farm has been approved at the second attempt, but has left locals unhappy.

The proposal by Angela Vaughan for a two-and-a-half-storey “farmhouse” with four other houses around a courtyard to the rear in place of existing buildings at Balance Farm, Titley near Kington, was granted outline permission in 2016, leaving only the details of the homes’ designs to be approved.

But last year Herefordshire Council’s planning committee deferred approving the designs as being “suburban” in materials and height, and lacking use of renewable energy.

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The redesigned houses will now be faced in stone rather than brick, will incorporate solar panels, air-source heat pumps and vehicle charging points, and will have their layout tweaked – though their sizes and heights remain much as before.

Titley group parish council chairman Richard Edwards told the committee: “There remains very strong opposition to this proposal within our community.”

The five “massive, almost identical” houses proposed were at odds with demonstrable local need, he said, adding: “The Titley area has limited services to support inappropriate housing of this scale.”

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Nearby resident John Jones added the plan “has now been amended four times, yet still does not meet concerns of the parish council”, with only “cosmetic” changes made since the previous deferral.

At “more than two-and-a-half times the average UK house size”, the proposed designs conflicted with the parish’s recent neighbourhood development plan, while no pedestrian access to the site was proposed, he said.

For the applicant, planning consultant Matt Tompkins said the outline permission already supported the house sizes which “cannot be revisited”, and that the council’s conservation and landscape officers had backed the proposal.

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Pointing out that the site was just 60 feet from the grade II listed park and garden of Eywood, local ward councillor Roger Philips said a “golden opportunity to produce something more sympathetic to the area has been missed”.

Creating a new farmhouse “would not complement, but try to rival” the neighbouring Balance Farmhouse, also listed, he said, while local planning policy gave “sound legal and planning reasons” to refuse the bid.

But in the event the committee voted by nine votes to two to approve the scheme, with two abstentions.