PEOPLE in Minety have been left disappointed after moves to bring back a village shop and improve its half a day a week postal service fell through as part of a large development scheme.

Minety Parish Council backed moves by coach firm owner Anthony Kinch to build a shop, a post office and offices alongside 20 houses – including ten affordable homes – at his edge-of-village site.

They were keen to see a shop return to the 1,500-population village for the first time in around a decade and also supported moves for a post office to replace the scant Friday morning service at the sports hall.

The scheme was earlier rejected by Wiltshire Council and now a Government planning inspector has supported the authority by throwing out an appeal against its decision.

It has left Minety residents feeling that their aspirations for a village shop, which they believe is an essential part of a rural community, are farther away than ever.

Parish council chairman Charles Cook said: “We are disappointed. We haven’t had a village shop for quite sometime – around ten years. Our post office opens half a day a week at the sports hall on a Friday morning.

“As this scheme has been turned down, I don’t see an immediate likelihood of a shop being opened in Minety. If it did it would have to be incorporated into a development such as this.”

Mr Cook felt that although the Kinch plan was on a brownfield site – the Kinch Coaches site at Hornbury Hill Farm – its location on the edge of the village was a drawback, as it would have increased the size of Minety, contrary to local planning policy.

“It would have been appropriate from a village point of view, though,” he added.

Dismissing the appeal, planning inspector Terry Phillimore said Wiltshire planning policy stressed that new development in small villages should be limited to “infill”.

He also said that the coach depot site, which bordered fields on two sides and was just over two acres, had not been allocated for housing development in the local plan.