A WOMAN has lost her fight to replace a horse stud barn with a four-bedroom eco house in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Beauty.

Karen Harris of Losito Stud in Whitchurch was refused outline planning permission to pull down the barn and build a contemporary looking three-storey home by Herefordshire planners.

She then appealed, but the planning inspector has now rejected her bid for the new building beside the A4137 road.

Planning inspector Hannah Porter ruled: “The proposal would fundamentally harm the character and appearance of the countryside, as well as the landscape and scenic beauty of the AONB.”

She said it would be visible from the road and nearby paths, and “would appear starkly at odds and harmfully out of place”.

“The proposal would be highly prominent, starkly contrasting with the structures and land use associated with the stud farm,” she added.

The stud, which also borders the Monmouth to Ross A40 dual carriageway, is run by Giovanni Losito, the former Italian national showjumping team manager. Ms Harris is named as a director of H and L Equine Properties, the “sponsors” of the business, on the Losito website.

She won her appeal to build a log cabin on the site in 2014 and said in her current appeal that the contemporary eco house plan would “enhance the scenic beauty of the AONB” in a county with a housing supply shortfall.

Herefordshire planners rejected the scheme last October, claiming it represented an “unjustified, discordant, unsustainable new residential development of poor design, in the open countryside, that would be harmful to the character and appearance of the landscape.”

And the planning inspector backed them, saying: “The proposed dwelling would appear bulky and box-like, lacking any sense of lightness or design refinement.”

“It would not be of exceptional quality or of a suitably innovative nature to justify a new isolated home in the countryside,” she added, while pollution risks from a former landfill site nearby had not been sufficiently addressed.

However, she refused a request from the council to award costs against Ms Harris.

In the appeal, the applicant had claimed she would integrate the building within the natural landscape, increase bio-diversity at the site by providing a wider range of habitats and follow the principles of “permaculture”, including producing no waste and harnessing and storing energy.

Her appeal added: “The concept is to construct a simple but elegant dwelling design and constructed to the best eco status.”

Ecological enhancements, such as wildflower planting to create “a species rich meadow” would support rare flowers such as orchids, the pasque flower and Cotswold pennycress, plus butterflies like the Chalkhill blue and Duke of Burgundy, it said.