Comment.

Bloor is to appeal against the the county’s decision to refuse planning permission for a 625-home estate to the north of Ledbury viaduct. It is not unexpected, although the news will disappoint many local residents.

After all, Bloor put in its planning application because that area of land, off the Bromyard Road, was earmarked for development on the Core Strategy plan, which is Herefordshire Council’s planning blueprint for the next two decades.

The Bloor team will have held lengthy discussions with the county’s planning team before the application was submitted. That application, in other words, did not arrive out of the blue!

Its recent rejection by Herefordshire Council, then, did come as a big surprise to some, and it is strong evidence of a planning impasse. A planning battle is the wrong term, because one suspects that, ultimately, Herefordshire Council does want to see this estate built: not least because the council has earmarked that site for such development. The problem, of course, is access.

When talking about Bloor and Herefordshire Council, we are mentioning two very powerful bodies; but what about local residents? There have public consultations and it is clear that the public of Ledbury and Wellington Heath, as a majority, have set their faces against the idea of single access to the new estate, off the Bromyard Road. That road already has traffic problems and it has flooded recently; the junction with the Hereford Road, by the railway bridge, is very tight. These problems must be addressed.