Drop ‘moratorium’ on new building now, councillors demand

Herefordshire must push for the so-called moratorium on new building in much of the county to be lifted “as soon as possible”, councillors have urged – saying it makes no practical difference to the state of local rivers.

Little development can take place in the extensive catchment of the protected but degraded river Lugg, a tributary of the Wye, unless this can be shown not to increase water pollution – a rule which has held up building thousands of homes and blocked millions in investment in the county since 2019.

No matter what planners and developers do to address the problem, the rule is likely to remain in place given the vastly greater unaddressed pollution from other sources, the council’s environment and sustainability scrutiny committee heard.

“There is no point at which housing can fix the river, given that over 80 per cent of pollution in it comes from farming,” Cabinet member for environment Elissa Swinglehurst told fellow councillors.

The “millions of pounds” invested by Welsh Water to improve sewage outflows has also “been wiped out by the diffuse pollution share”, she added.
Andrew McRobb, director of local countryside charity CPRE which is among groups measuring pollutants in waterways, said these “are massively over the targets”, by a factor of around 10, and that the problem “is still increasing”.

Coun Richard Thomas, an ex-farmer, said that “doing away with the moratorium tomorrow would not increase the phosphate in the Lugg by one per cent” and that government bodies the Environment Agency and Natural England “are being quite ridiculous” on the issue.

The council’s “phosphate mitigation lead” Elizabeth Duberley said its nutrient credit scheme based on new wetlands at Luston, Tarrington and a third planned site, “has addressed almost all of the planning backlog” in the county.

But Coun Robert Highfield said there would be “a wall of new building applications” if the moratorium were lifted.

And Herefordshire Construction Industry Lobby Group representative Merry Albright said she had found it “incredibly hard” to get private nutrient mitigation schemes approved.

She added the impact of the moratorium “ripples out to all corners of our rural communities, leaving families and small businesses to shoulder a disproportionate punishment for far too long”.