Plans for a new house in the north Herefordshire countryside have been passed despite heritage and road safety concerns.

Mr and Mrs Painter of Little Hereford applied a year ago for full permission to build the one-and-a-half-storey, three-bedroom house at Little Hereford beside the A456 between Tenbury and Woofferton.

The one-acre site is next to the village’s 16th-century, grade II listed Old Rectory, whose access onto the main road it would share.

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Designed by local firm Border Oak to be highly insulated, the house was to be finished in red brick and weatherboarding with clay rooftiles and “attractive” detailing.

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While not objecting, Little Hereford parish council warned that this stretch of main road “is extremely busy, and the existing junction is dangerous as it is”.

But the council’s highways officer said no collisions have been recorded at the spot, and that with a widened entrance it “will not have a material impact on the safety and operation of the local highway network”.

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The council’s historic buildings officer Debra Lewis meanwhile objected that the new house “would not preserve the setting” of the Old Rectory, and that this harm “would clearly outweigh the public benefits of the proposal”.

But planning officer Jack Dyer concluding that with its “modest” scale and “more traditional” materials, “the impact upon the setting of the Old Rectory is minimised as much as possible”.

Full permission was granted.