A couple’s bid to build their own retirement home in the Herefordshire countryside has been knocked back by a government inspector.

The house and garden would have been on a yard at Crowels Ash between Pencombe and Bromyard, which the applicants Michael Jones and his wife previously used as part of their steel erecting and fabrication business.

They wanted to leave their large nearby house to their children, who would carry on the business, “enabling several generations of a local family to reside and work in the area”, the original application said.

The design of the new house was to have “a theme of a Dutch (curved metal roof) barn with lean-to”, which would have “immediately assimilated it into its rural setting”, it said.

This pointed out that recent government policy encourages self-building and requires local authorities to enable it.

But Herefordshire Council refused the initial bid last March for several reasons.

It was outside any settlement boundary, its occupants would have had to rely on their cars, and its being self-built was not grounds for being an exception to planning policy.

It would be “incongruous and unsympathetic to the character of the area”. And being in the river Lugg catchment, it would have to show no adverse effect on river water quality.

The site’s previous use for steel fabrication could also have contaminated the site, affecting future occupiers, the council said.

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Bromyard Town Council also said it could not support the bid.

The couple appealed against the council’s decision, but now planning inspector Bhupinder Thandi has backed the council’s refusal.

“The location of the site would not be an appropriate one for housing and the proposed development would result in harm to the area’s character and appearance,” his report concluded.

He said he had seen nothing to support the claim of possible land contamination, nor had he considered the issue of river pollution due to their being other grounds for refusal.

But he considered the proposed water disposal measures “unsatisfactory”.