A plan to build a new estate of 350 houses between Hereford and the protected Lugg Meadow will not now be decided on until December – if then.

The Land East of Hereford Action Group, which opposes the plan, wrote to planning case officer Ollie Jones asking why the target decision date had been put back first to early September, then until December 20.

Mr Jones replied that the extension “has been mutually agreed in order to provide the applicant with additional time to address the issues raised”, adding he was “unable to confirm a precise timeline for the submission of this additional information”.

RELATED NEWS:

There would then have to be further consultation on the revised plans with specialists and the public.

Follow the Hereford Times' campaign against this development here.

Such time extensions “are not uncommon in the case of large and complex applications such as this” and can be added to indefinitely if both parties agree, Mr Jones added.

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.

The proposal put forward by STL group for farmland south of the A438 Ledbury Road has already drawn over a thousand public objections, an almost unprecedented number in the county, along with those from local councillors, officers and conservation groups.

Concerns have mainly focussed on its environmental and visual impact on the Lugg Meadows, a protected and traditionally managed flood plain, but have also brought in issues of flooding, the capacity of local services, traffic and road safety.

OTHER NEWS:

Mr Jones wrote in May to Savills, the property services firm acting for the developer, setting out numerous reasons why the application, “in its current form, cannot be supported”, which led to the initial extension allowing time for these to be addressed.

He has now told Savills that the inclusion of a farm shop along with other commercial space in the plan would have to be justified with “robust” evidence that the location was the best one, along with an impact assessment showing how it would affect existing city businesses.

Meanwhile Herefordshire Wildlife Trust’s nature recovery manager Sarah King has written to Herefordshire Council to take issue with its decision back in March not to require an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the scheme.