There are two issues that may be of interest currently.
HEREFORD AREA PLAN
First, you may have heard about something called the Hereford Area Plan (HAP). This is essentially the Neighbourhood Plan for the city area and because the City Council has not produced its own plan, Herefordshire Council are doing most of the work for them. Herefordshire have very clear ideas about how the city should develop over the next decade and unsurprisingly their focus is on housing. There are already 3000+ houses proposed for the four strategic sites at 3 Elms, Holmer, Lower Bullingham and in the city centre by the football ground (the Urban Village). Herefordshire’s Core Strategy says that double this number is needed in the city by 2031, a minimum of 6500. Therefore the new Plan needs to show that after any recently built homes are accounted for, there is sufficient available land within the city to make this total possible.
By the time you read this, Herefordshire will have just finished consulting on a number of possible housing sites that they have selected from a longer list. If you go to the Herefordshire website and search for Hereford Area Plan you should find all the documents. The importance to Breinton is that many of the possible sites are adjacent to the parish boundary. In particular the fields on the north side of Kings Acre Road from the Bay Horse towards the Wyevale Garden Centre are included. So is much of the area adjacent to the Crematorium and Lower Hill Farm close to Adams Hill. If you live on Kings Acre Road or Adams Hill you might like to look at the maps and justifications for these sites.
Those of you who keep a close watch on local housing matters will realise that the additional sites along Kings Acre Road will double (at least) the 1200+ houses currently being proposed by the Church Commissioners at 3 Elms. The area bordering Adams Hill formed what was known as the Whitecross strategic site during the early stages of the Core Strategy. It was rejected six years ago in favour of the 3 Elms and the other strategic sites mentioned above. The Parish Council has made its views known to Herefordshire’s planning department and you can read these elsewhere on the website
KINGS ACRE LIME TREES
The second local issue is that the threats to the avenue of lime trees along Kings Acre Road are increasing. We already know that if the western bypass were to proceed in the future, the favoured Red route would destroy around 10 trees in the vicinity of the Bay Horse pub. If the access road for the 3 Elms housing area is built as planned a further 3 of 4 more trees would need to be removed on the north side of Kings Acre Road closer in to Hereford. Now, with consideration being given to the possible housing sites around Adams Hill, still more might have to be removed on the south side of the road in the vicinity of the Fayre Oaks caravan park. This new threat is because Herefordshire’s planners feel that the only feasible access for any houses that might be built around Adams Hill/Lower Hill Farm is via a new road down to Kings Acre Road. In total around 18 trees from an avenue of around 70 could be removed. There are red ribbons on most of these trees put there by people who want the trees to remain. The trees are probably worth protecting in their own right but taken together as an avenue they are an almost unique and significant landscape feature of the Hereford street scene. They form one of the nicer road routes into Hereford. Again the Parish Council has made its views known. Some people have suggested that the trees are already threatened by the ivy on them. If you go to the Woodland Trust website you will find an article that makes it clear, ivy does not kill trees and is not a reason for thinking that these trees are disposable. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk