A BID to build over a hundred new homes on the outskirts of a rural village has been quashed.

Last year, Oakmere Homes applied for permission to build 23 houses and 81 apartments with associated roads, car parking and landscaping on land south of Accrington Road in Whalley.

However, planning officers at the Ribble Valley Borough Council have refused the proposal – which would have seen 49 homes specifically built from those over the age of 55 – citing a variety of reasons for the turndown.

During the planning process several official bodies also objected to the plans, with the local parish council outlining concerns over loss of land, wildlife and habitat as well as an increase in traffic and loss of character to the village of Whalley.

In a report, John Macholc, the council’s economic director of development and planning said that the proposal was in ‘direct conflict’ with elements the authority’s core strategy.

One of those was down to a failure to provide necessary levels of affordable housing without sufficient justification and another was in regard to concerns around flooding.

The report states: “The submitted information fails to adequately establish whether the proposed development is likely to be affected by current or future flooding or that it can be adequately protected from such flooding.”

The document continues: “The proposal is considered contrary [to elements of] the core strategy insofar that approval would result in the introduction of an anomalous, discordant, incongruous, poorly designed and unsympathetic form of development that fails to respond positively to the inherent character of the area, also resulting in injurious and harmful impacts upon the setting of, and views into and out of the defined Whalley Conservation Area.”

Further concerns were raised about the amount of parking provision which was outlined in the plans as well as the surrounding highways network.

The report concluded: “The proposal does not comprise sustainable development and there were no amendments to the scheme, or conditions that could reasonably have been imposed, which could have made the development acceptable. It was therefore not possible to approve the application.”

The applicant now has six months to appeal the decision.