Wormbridge – A Vision for a Sustainable Future
Carbon Neutral Development
The Whitfield Estate has submitted an application for the first carbon-neutral housing and commercial development in Herefordshire. All the CO2 generated by the building work and materials will be offset by regenerative farming, extra tree planting and soil improvements in the fields surrounding the site.
Edward Clive of the Whitfield Estate said ‘Living very nearby we wanted to do as much as possible to limit the impact of these new houses. Future residents will be able to walk their dogs through trees that contribute to offsetting the CO2 created by their own homes. At the moment, a scheme like this is voluntary but we expect it soon to become part of government policy’.
The application is for 70 new houses and an organic enlargement of the existing Wormbridge Court Business Centre. The commercial part of the scheme will create a new café and community room by restoring a listed former stable block, along with new build workshops. The overall scheme is a significant re-working of a 2019 application. Following feedback from Herefordshire Council, the plan has been extensively revised by renowned Herefordshire landscape architects Robert Myers and Associates to respond more directly to the landscape.
The new layout uses the shape of the land, four existing ponds and an old school building to create a varied mix of housing types, with courtyard-type smaller houses. The visual impact is much reduced by the careful placing of the houses in the folds of the land. It has been laid out with footpaths threading through the houses, linking them to several existing public rights-of-way and new permissive paths, as well as to the proposed café and Forge Garage shop.
It is intended that the social housing on the site will partly be owned by the Addington Fund, a charity set up directly to help farming families with affordable housing. Farming and horticulture are by far the largest employers in this area of Herefordshire, with pressing housing needs.
Full details of the application can be found here:
