WAVERLEY Council has lost the battle to prevent an empty school in Frensham Road, Lower Bourne, being demolished and the site being redeveloped with three detached homes.

Tattingstone, 70 Frensham Road, a large Edwardian house which for three years operated as a small private school set up by the Plymouth Brethren, has been subject of several failed attempts to secure consent for more intensive use since 2002.

It was only after a successful appeal in 2005 that the Three Counties School was allowed to be established and prior to that, two applications to build three extra homes were refused by Waverley.

Bids for consent to build 10 flats on the land were also refused, in both 2008 and in 2007, when an appeal was dismissed.

But the inspector who determined the most recent appeal has given the go-ahead for developers Millgate Homes to build three homes on the wooded three-acre site, which lies within the South Farnham Area of Special Environmental Quality.

For full story, see this week's Farnham Herald.