A FARM application to site two holiday lodges in a field has been refused by Dorset Council.

The application for a change of use at Higher Manor Farm at Littlemead, in the Broadwey area of Weymouth, involved two timber-clad lodges under slate roofs with parking for four vehicles.

Access to the site would be via a track running between the farmstead and Wild Meadow Cottage within a short distance of the Dorchester Road.

The site is outside of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but does lie within an area classified as being an area of local landscape importance.

The application, from the Studley family, who have owned the land since 1963, said the lodges would have provided work for two part-time staff.

A previous application for the site had been withdrawn after concerns were raised by planners about the landscape impact of the proposed development – the new plans being submitted alongside a landscape statement.

A statement to planners said that the lodges were needed to help supplement farming income, two holiday cottages having already been built on the farm, with a third granted planning permission, but not yet started.

Almost half of the farm’s 40 acres is now rented to the Horse Course equine charity.

Both lodges were to have been set lower in the sloping field than in the initial application with the addition of a coppice and an orchard to help screen them.

Neither Weymouth Town Council, Highways, or Natural England objected to the proposals although concerns were raised about the access track being liable to flooding.

In refusing the application a planning officer decided that the lodges would have an adverse impact on the landscape and that the flooding risk to the site access, also made the use of the plot unacceptable, with the risk that allowing the proposal could set a precedent.

Said the officers’ conclusion: “The proposed development would result in an unduly visually dominant, and incongruous form of development extending development into open countryside at this urban fringe location…Furthermore (if approved) the proposed development could result in a precedent being set whereby it would be difficult to resist further similar proposals for small scale holiday accommodation on adjacent fields with the resulting cumulative impact being adverse impact on the landscape.”