PLANNERS have refused consent for 15 new homes, five of which would have been for social housing, on the edge of the village of Harling, near Thetford.

PLANNERS have refused consent for 15 new homes, five of which would have been for social housing, on the edge of the village of Harling, near Thetford.

David Taylor had applied for planning permission for the scheme on Lopham Road on an irregularly-shaped parcel of vacant land .

The site is adjoined on one side by a small industrial estate and on the other by open countryside. Planning approval was granted in January this year for 10 new homes on an adjacent site.

Members of Breckland Council's planning control committee were unhappy about the scheme because the site falls outside the settlement boundary for the village defined in the Local Plan and is against national policy. By agreeing to the new homes, planners would have allocated 25 of those earmarked in the Local Development Framework which was half the 50 identified for Harling.

But Mr Taylor, explaining that this was essentially phase two of the scheme allowed earlier this year, said it would provide 15 more homes in a village with a waiting list of more than 300. There had been 62 letters of support and there had not been a single objector.

Committee members, who had concerns over the site and its layout, were made aware of a revised layout for the site with the homes being clustered around a village open green.