A struggling equestrian centre near a Somerset village could soon be turned into housing.

Hartley Wood Equestrian Centre lies just outside the village of Clutton but the business has faced troubled times. Now owners Richard Evans and Michele Britton have submitted a planning application to Bath and North East Somerset Council to turn the centre into a nine-home development.

The owners bought Hartley Wood in 2009, as a business in liquidation, with the hope of turning the place around, a design and access statement submitted with their application explained. However, the unavailability of additional grazing land meant the centre had to invest in show jumping competitions and dressage tests which could not cover their costs.

The statement added: "Due to the rundown state Hartley Wood was in, a huge amount of time, money, and equipment has been invested to present the centre as attractive as possible, including the provision of new fencing and hiring a professional gardener to carry out some additional maintenance.

"Following the impact of Covid-19 the business continues to make significant losses and recent figures are a reflection of how — no matter how much work — diversifying of business failed to make Hartley Wood a viable concern."

Now they are proposing turning the centre into housing, with an outline planning application for nine homes. Designs submitted with the application suggest a horseshoe-shaped block around a courtyard replacing the current buildings, with a "farm house" building in the centre. 

Each house would have a garden, surrounded by the existing meadow which would be kept. But, as an outline application, the designs may be changed at a later stage in the application process.

A previous attempt to get planning permission for the scheme was refused by the council over concerns that the homes would be "isolated" and the homes have a greater impact on the green belt than the buildings currently in place.

In the new application, developers argued that the site was not isolated because of other nearby rural homes. The design and access statement added: "The existing brownfield land within the greenbelt will be reduced significantly for building area which is considered a significant benefit to the site's surroundings."

You can view and comment on the plans here: https://www.bathnes.gov.uk/webforms/planning/details.html?refval=23%2F04243%2FOUT#details_Section