A plan to replace a former spa at a Herefordshire beauty spot with eight large sustainable homes has been granted permission. Manchester-based Dwell Ahead has applied to redevelop the site off Leys Hill Road in the Wye Valley national landscape at Kerne Bridge, in the south of the county. The one-and-a-half-hectare sloping site has been vacant since the closure about four years ago of the women-only Wye Valley Spa, before which it was home to Cats children’s nursery.
RELATED NEWS : All the existing structures would be demolished under the plan, which replaced an earlier approved proposal to build five larger “executive” homes on the site. In a modern style, the five four-bedroom and three three-bedroom detached houses would be partly recessed into the hillside, their pitched roofs would have solar panels, while inside the houses would incorporate several energy and water conservation measures. 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 Wye Valley national landscape’s planning officer Josh Bailey commented that “built form hereabouts is small scale with little if any modern infrastructure”, and felt the “bunker-style appearance” of the proposed designs was “clearly unprepossessing” and “not a positive response to this protected landscape”. The proposal for “large, luxury dwellings” was also “far from providing genuinely su.