A BID by a fruit farm for permission to turn an old rural packhouse into a home has been refused by planners.

The Man of Ross Ltd farming company, based at Glewstone six miles north of Monmouth, applied to convert the single-storey corrugated iron-clad building into a three-bedroom home, which is located on land north-west of Glewstone Court Hotel, and stated it would be ‘well-suited to local housing need’.

A similar plan was refused permission in 2022, given the amount of work required to convert the building and a lack of capacity in the water connection, while any impact on local river systems had not been made clear.

The site is located in open countryside which includes the small single storey structure, formerly a packhouse used in connection with orchards that previously existed on the adjacent land.

The planners feel the existing building has no architectural merit or historic importance and is constructed in a single skin of corrugated metal sheeting over a timber frame.

The more recent application sought to overcome these with a new structural survey setting out the viability of retaining much of the walls and concrete floor, and ecological assessment.

Marstow Parish Council did not object to the revised plan, nor were there any public objections.

But Herefordshire Council planning officer Emma Aram said of the new survey: “It raises the same concerns regarding the condition of the packhouse as the previous survey, and only serves to reiterate that it is in a poor state of repair, both in relation to the external cladding and the timber frame structure.”

So although the other reasons for the previous refusal had been addressed, she considered the building still needed major reconstruction through the replacement of the roof, wall coverings and floors and possible replacement of the roof and wall timbers.

Ms Aram said that the existing building would require a significant degree of new works in the form of a new floor, new wall coverings and a new roof and potentially the timber frame structure as well in order to function as a dwelling.

She concluded: “There are too many issues to demonstrate that this is a true conversion project and not a re-build.”