Plan to replace flood-prone Hereford care home with housing
Basement parking plan could keep residents dry
A planned 20-home development at a flood-prone Hereford spot takes a radical approach to ensuring future occupants stay dry.
The junction of Watery Lane and the Lower Bullingham Lane in the southeast of the city has hit by several floods in recent years, when the adjacent Red Brook has burst its banks.
The Storm Dennis floods of February 2020 in particular led to theclosure of the Manor Rest Home at the site, which has lain empty since.
Now local landowner Goodwin Farming has applied for full planning permission (number 262732) to knock down the care home along with flats and former agricultural buildings within the half-hectare site – but not the main Manor Farm building.
“A relatively handsome two-storey former farmhouse of red brick under pitched slate roofing”, this “is considered to be a locally important historic building, although not listed”, the application says..
Now in seven flats, the building would be preserved and its setting enhanced by removing the “flood blighted structures” next to it.
Manor Rest Home and other buildings now show signs of structural failure, leaving their conversion and re-use “not realistic nor economically viable”, it explains.
Instead, the scheme proposes four terraced blocks of varying sizes and orientations around the historic farmhouse, as well as two semi-detached houses immediately south of it.
The 12 in parts of the site most prone to flooding would have three storeys, with the ground-floor “undercrofts” being used only for car storage.
The other eight, of two storeys, would have habitable ground floors, but these would be raised between 60cm and 1 metre above ground level.
The 12 in three-storey blocks would share outdoor living space, while the remaining eight would have individual gardens.
Their materials would echo the farmhouse and other nearby traditional buildings, while all would have roof-mounted solar panels.
The scheme would “deliver much-needed smaller new housing in a sustainable location, close to the city’s main employment zone and contributing to meeting local housing need,” the application statement concludes.
It can currently be commented on until October 29.