A Herefordshire town will not now get a new wine bar in a disused church.

An M Etheridge applied in February 2020 to convert the first and second floor of the former Methodist church on the Homend, Ledbury, into a wine bar with food, with manager’s accommodation on the ground floor.

Herefordshire Council’s planning committee refused the plan in January last year, citing the bar’s likely impact on neighbours in the partly residential area.

The developer appealed, but now Government-appointed planning inspector Tamsin Law has backed the council’s refusal and dismissed the appeal.

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Explaining this, she said other non-residential uses near the church “are relatively few and far between”, and these tend not to “operate for similar times of day, or with similar implications in terms of noise, disturbance and odour as the scheme before me”.

The wine bar, on the other hand, would “operate late in the day, where [sic] nearby residents would have a legitimate expectation of a reasonable degree of tranquillity”, she said.

She concluded: “It has not been demonstrated that the scheme would integrate appropriately with its surroundings.”

The plan however would not have harmed the building’s setting, in the Ledbury conservation area among several listed buildings, she noted.

The church, which is not itself listed, is thought to date from 1849, and was closed and sold in 2019 for £250,000. Ledbury Methodists have since relocated to a smaller building on Bye Street, funded by the sale.

The original application prompted 10 objections from residents, while Ledbury Town Council also objected to the likely noise and impact on traffic and parking in the area that the wine bar would bring.

But superintendent minister for the Methodist Church in the area Rev Phil Warrey said at the time that the project “looks like a very sensitive and tasteful use of the building”.