Plans to build 135 homes on land at the town’s eastern edge have been submitted.
Bellway Homes says it wants to “establish a landscape-led community” at Home Farm, Boreham, with 40 per cent of the homes designated ‘affordable’ to address local housing needs.
Houses will range from one-bedroom units to five-bedroom homes.
In an application to Wiltshire Council for full planning permission, the developer has set out its plans for car and cycle parking, landscaping and publicly accessibly amenity space, new tree planting, and improved access to Home Farm from Boreham Road, with new vehicular, cycle and pedestrian routes through the site.
The site is made up of approximately 11 hectares of land on the eastern edge of Warminster, with Battlesbury Hillfort Monument to its north and Bishopstrow House to the east.
Residents have campaigned for several years against housing on the site, saying it is unsuitable for development due to lack of suitable access, loss of an important rural buffer for Warminster and risk of harm to several significant heritage assets.
The developer says the plans are “sensitive to the site’s location close to Bishopstrow Conservation Area and Battlesbury Hillfort, and include improvements to the existing wall fronting Boreham Road.”
Development at the site was first mooted ten years ago, in 2016.
It was included in Wiltshire Council’s draft Housing Site Allocations Plan in 2018 but removed on the advice of the planning inspector in 2020, following objections from Historic England.
Historic England is concerned about the views from Battlesbury Camp, an Iron Age hillfort, and from King’s Barrow, a prehistoric long barrow.
The government body says screening should be included in the plans to reduce the visual impact of the new development and the light emitted from houses and streetlamps.
A decision by Wiltshire Council is expected in August.
