A RIDING centre in Hartlebury has jumped over hurdles to get the goahead for a major extension on green belt land.

Stourport Riding Centre has been given planning permission by Wychavon District Council to build a large indoor riding school at its existing facility in Upper Poolands Farm, despite concerns the development would be inappropriate within the green belt.

The approval was secured by rural planning firm Moule and Co.

The centre, which has nine staff, already provides lessons to more than 200 children and 100 disabled users each week.

Bosses said they needed to expand as the existing indoor school was too small for many of its activities and could not meet demand. The new building would provide modern and safe facilities to allow the business to grow, they added.

The new facility will en-able the centre to provide more lessons as well as being big enough to host showjumping and dressage events for groups and clubs.

Anne Towe, owner of the riding centre, said: “Since establishing the business 25 years ago, we have always sought to improve and develop the facilities and with the existing centre at capacity we needed to increase our facilities.

“Although we had a large outdoor menage, it was very difficult to plan lessons according to the weather so this indoor school will make a huge difference to the amount and variety of lessons that we can run.

“The main hurdle we had to overcome was to achieve planning approval, which we knew would be difficult with such a large building in the green belt.”

The size of the main framework of the building will be 72 metres x 31.28m and it will be built next to the existing facilities on the site.

Hannah Moule, of Moule and Co, said: “When we were first approached by the centre, we knew it was going to be a major application because of the size of the building proposed in green belt area. It was a lot of work getting all the pieces of jigsaw to fit but after a long process we were delighted for Anne and her team that the application was fully approved.”