A Herefordshire fruit farm plans to convert disused roadside buildings into five houses.

Tillington Fruit Farm, of Crowfoot Road, near Burghill, is seeking so-called prior approval for the scheme, under developer rights which allow conversion of farm buildings into homes without full planning permission.

Plans submitted by the farm show a terrace of one one-bedroom and two two-bedroom houses, each of a single storey, with entrances from the rear.

An adjacent barn would be converted into a further two properties, each on two storeys with open-plan ground floors and four bedrooms upstairs.

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The plan is a resubmitted version of a previous bid, refused by Herefordshire Council on the grounds that the proposed demolition of part of the buildings, and adding of extra external walls, “went beyond what is reasonably necessary for the buildings to function as dwellinghouses”.

The new application says it has addressed these concerns in a revised design which retains part of the brick buildings previously intended to be demolished.

The scheme would keep the “agrarian character of the buildings and their rural context”, with new windows and doors “giving a modest domestic lilt to the buildings’ vernacular”.

The five homes would meet minimum space standards, and there would be adequate daylight to all rooms, the application says, pointing out that no other issues had been raised regarding the previous bid.

Comments on the application, numbered 224090, can be made until January 6.

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