A couple who tried to build a family home on land by a Herefordshire village have been told by a government inspector that it is too far from the village to be allowed.

Marilyn and Larry Lowther had their initial planning application for the three-bedroom home by Blakemere, 11 miles west of Hereford, turned down by Herefordshire Council last October, but appealed the decision.

Now planning inspector Liam Page has ruled that the house would be “an appreciable distance away” from, and not contiguous with, the existing village.

For this reason it would go against both the village’s neighbourhood plan, agreed in 2018, and the county’s local plan, he said.

This was despite over a dozen letters supporting the couple's bid, including from two local parish councillors, who were involved in setting out the neighbourhood plan and its contiguousness policy, saying the the planned house would indeed be contiguous with the village.

A submission by the couple’s agent added that the plot could be regarded as contiguous if an intervening orchard was treated as within the curtilage of the adjacent farmhouse rather than as agricultural land.

But in the absence of a defined boundary to the village, the contiguousness test “would appear to relate to dwellings and not to other buildings or land uses,” the inspector said.

The house would have only limited impact on local housing supply and social and economic development, these being significantly outweighed by the contiguousness issue, he concluded.

“After 40 years living the village, we wanted the option to downsize rather than moving away,” Marilyn Lowther said.

“Now no one else in the village can build either.”