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Search the Public Notice PortalOwners of a historic Herefordshire farm in a scenic spot are fighting moves to force them to take down unapproved solar panels from the roof of a barn.
Herefordshire Council served enforcement on owners of Mainoaks Farm Cottages, beside the river Wye between Goodrich and Symonds Yat, requiring them to remove the 28 “unauthorised” solar panels, along with wiring and an inverter, from the curtilage-listed barn, within three months.
The enforcement notice says the panels, fitted to the south-facing roof of the barn, “are very visible within the group but less so from wider views”, though they can still be made out from a public footpath and river bridge.
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Historic England’s website shows four separate buildings at the farm, at the end of a cul-de-sac, are grade II listed – a farmhouse dating from the 15th century, a 17th-century granary, 18th-century barn and mid-19th-century cider mill.
As is customary, the council’s notice gave the owners a month in which to appeal against the enforcement before the clock started on it.
Venaglass Courtfield (Residential), a London-registered property investment firm with assets of around £7 million according to its latest filings and the apparent owner of the farm, has now appealed to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate in a bid to have it overturned.
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A statement accompanying its appeal claims the panels “are visible from a very limited area”, within “a utilitarian farmyard context”.
They cause no physical harm to the building, while the “tonality of the panels is consistent with the slate roof below”, it maintains.
Indeed they were “chosen as a means of improving energy efficiency (at the farm) without recourse to the replacement of windows etc which could potentially cause greater harm to the historic fabric”.
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Granting planning consent for them “would not create a pressure to grant other consents for the installation of PV [photovoltaic] panels to listed structures”, it claims.
The appeal will be determined on the basis of written representations and a site visit by a planning inspector. Comments can be submitted up to July 30.
Six cottages at the farm were previously offered for holiday accommodation but this appears to have ceased in 2012.
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