A BID to develop an equine cross country course on land alongside a country hall is set to receive planning clearance later this week.

Applicant Peter Quigley is seeking approval to create the course in a field bordered by trees alongside Holmside Hall, between Burnhope and Edmondsley, County Durham.

The field is surrounded by plantation woodland, with an average 28-metre width, and sits between the hall’s network of buildings and nearby Hag Wood.

It would be formed by creating a track from wood shavings from felled trees between two and three metres wide through the tree belt, on a site which is neither a conservation area or subject to a tree preservation order.

The course would feature periodic jumps within the tree belt as well as over field boundaries and across natural land level changes created by the topography of the site.

All the jumps would be created from a mixture of felled trees as well as the modified field boundaries, with the course alternating between the tree belt and open field sections.

It would be linked to, and enhance the established business at the site, PDQ Equestrian, for which approval was granted for 37 livery stables and the erection of an indoor riding school, plus outdoor area for schooling horses, in 2006.

In a statement to Durham County Council’s area planning committee (North) in support of his application, Mr Quigley said: “Economic survival means all small businesses today need to constantly change and diversify to attract new customers, and provide existing customers with something new and different.

“PDC Equestrian Ltd is no exception, and we urgently need to find a new market for growth.”

Mr Quigley said on opening, offering specialist events in dressage, show jumping and showing, the site was in competition with four other venues across Northumberland and County Durham.

That has now increased to nine, hastening the need to provide something new or risk “stagnation without growth.”

He added that the plan involved the conversion of an overgrown plantation of conifer trees, recycling the timber into wood shavings and providing “challenging fixed jumps.”

The proposal has attracted no opposition and is not considered to have any adverse impact on the surrounding landscape.

Members of the committee are recommended to approve the scheme as, “an acceptable form of diversification to the established equine business”, at the hall.

The committee meets at County Hall, Durham, on Thursday (February 26).