New home next to listed Chesterfield building given green light despite design concerns

The single-storey property can now be built on the grounds of Wingerworth Hall, which dates from around 1698.

North East Derbyshire District Council has granted planning permission despite officers’ concerns about the design.

A report says: “It is officers’ opinion that although the design is not very inspiring it is a simple, modest, single storey dwelling which does not compete with the listed building and which due to the proposed materials and well vegetated site with no public viewpoints is in keeping with the area and the street scene.”

The plans have attracted criticism from Wingerworth Parish Council, the village’s district councillor Coun Diana Ruff, Chesterfield and District Civic Society and some residents.

Coun Ruff said the proposed building ‘does not blend in with the Grade II listed building’.

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Wingerworth Parish Council said in a statement: “The council feel that the proposed development is out of character for the area, is too large and too close in proximity to a listed building.

“The council also have concerns about the potential impact on wildlife in the area.”

Civic society chairman Philip Riden admitted the council was in a ‘difficult position’ given it had previously granted outline consent for a dwelling on the site.

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He said: “Not even the council’s own officers could bring themselves to describe the building for which drawings have been approved as ‘well designed’.

"It is in fact mediocre in the extreme.”

Derbyshire County Council’s archaeologist Steve Baker said in his report to the district council that the plans, like earlier proposals, would ‘impact the setting of the neighbouring Grade I and Grade II listed buildings’.

However, applicant Stuart Armstrong has insisted the plans will produce a high quality development.

He said in a letter to the council: “The design philosophy is to construct a high quality dwelling that appears to have been a former stable block/outbuilding that has been converted for residential use whilst respecting the setting of the listed building and adjoining countryside.”

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