Ten-home plan for former city-centre garage

Plans have been put forward for ten new homes on the site of a central Hereford garage.

Local firm Garrock Ltd is seeking planning permission (application 250805) to demolish the single-storey Wyebridge Motors and a neighbouring two-storey house in St Martin’s Street, between the Old Bridge and the Asda roundabout.

Accompanying plans show these would be replaced by two terraced blocks of three storeys with hipped roofs oriented north-to-south, each consisting of five homes, with a communal garden area in between.

The ground floors of the new properties would house only garages and utility rooms, with habitable accommodation “to be set at a suitable height due to flood risk”, the application says.

They would each feature three bedrooms including a dressing room off the top-floor master bedroom, outdoor terraces on the first floor, air-source heat pumps and high levels of insulation.

Their scale and design is intended to fit in with the existing buildings in the street, which lies within the city’s main conservation area, and in particular with the neighbouring grade II listed St Martin’s Place.

Drybridge Walk, a footpath immediately south of the site which continues under the approach to Greyfriars Bridge, would be unaffected, as would the prominent Drybridge House retirement housing and daycare complex adjacent to it.

Wyebridge Motors sold cars and carried out MoTs, but closed a year ago this month with the retirement of owner Mick Colwell after 50 years’ trading.

Comments on the planning application can be made via Herefordshire Council’s planning portal until May 11.