A plan to knock down five farm buildings in a Herefordshire hamlet and replace them with a lorry washing and servicing shed has been refused permission.

Keyo Agricultural Services’ proposal failed to show its plan would not have a negative effect on the surrounding environment, Herefordshire Council’s development manager Andrew Banks said in his decision.

The candidates for demolition, at Shucknall Court, Weston Beggard, just off the main A4103 Hereford-Worcester road, were described in a planning officer’s report as “a collection of under-utilised buildings and barns in a varying state of condition”, two of which have already been demolished.

The Lincolnshire-based company, which specialises in transporting poultry, had bought the farm as a regional base to serve the area's growing poultry industry.

Its planned new steel-framed building would have been open on three sides and measured 20 by 15 metres, and rising to 7 metres.

It was to “be used for washing poultry transfer modules and the trailer bed once they have transported poultry from the brooding farm to the rearing farm”, the company’s application said.

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Two lorries would have left the site in late evening six days a week, returning in the early morning to be cleaned and serviced during the day, it explained.

The washdown water was to drain into a sealed storage tank before being spread seasonally onto adjacent fields, also owned by the company.

The spreading of chicken manure on fields within the catchment of the protected Wye and Lugg rivers has been linked to their deteriorating ecological condition, due to the effects of nutrient-rich runoff washing into them.

A report by the council’s ecology officer James Bisset said permission for such projects “can only be granted if there is scientific certainty that no unmitigated phosphate pathways exist, and that there is no adverse effect on the integrity of the River Lugg SAC (special areas of conservation)”.

The application had not shown that the dirty water from the lorries, containing not only manure but also oils, fuels and “unspecified” cleaning chemicals from the washdown, would not end up in the protected river catchment, his report said.

Weston Beggard Parish Council also objected to the plan for this and other reasons, including noise, amenity, drainage, economic benefit and highway access. A further 25 letters were submitted from 16 parties, 22 of them objecting.

Mr Banks concluded that the proposal would add to water pollution in the Lugg catchment, particularly of phosphates, levels of which “already exceed conservation objectives” for the river, four miles from the farm.

Demolishing five buildings to accommodate a single new one would also undermine the policy set out in the neighbourhood plan of accommodating “live/work units” at Shucknall Court – which locals considered was “an important opportunity to provide an environmental sustainable business/residential development”, he said.