A Herefordshire couple say their cider business, recently featured on TV, has been hit by a tardy planning decision.

Artistraw Cider co-owner Tom Tibbits said his partner Lydia Crimp put in a planning application over a year ago for a larger cider shed at their base near Hay-on-Wye, to enable the business to expand.

This also sought permission for a self-built home of their own design on the site of the current cider shed, while their current bungalow was to be demolished and replaced with a new garage.

But it was only validated by Herefordshire Council planners in March, before finally being granted approval this month.

“We were asked to show ‘biodiversity net gain’ and eventually persuaded them our organic orchards provide that,” Mr Tibbits said.

The delay “has meant we have had to leave a lot of fruits in the orchards, because we don’t have the storage space”, he explained.

“Right now our current four-metre-square juice shed is stuffed to the gills.”

Planning officer Emma Jones, who visited the business in April and August, said that during the consultation process the couple’s planned house had been “simplified” and its roof lowered on officers’ advice.

Biodiversity net gain is to be achieved with the addition of six bird nesting features and four bat roosting features “of different types”, while external lighting is to be restricted “to protect all species and (the) local intrinsically dark landscape”, Ms Jones ruled.

Full planning permission was granted.

In October the couple’s “artisanal” approach to cidermaking featured in BBC’s Countryfile, contrasting this with the far larger cider firm Westons, also in Herefordshire. It can still be watched online.

In the programme, Mr Tibbits described the couple’s full-time move into cidermaking as “a hobby that got out of control” while Ms Crimp said it was born of “a shared love of the planet and good-quality booze”.

Their ciders are made without added sugars or sulphates, using handpicked apples from unsprayed wildlife-rich orchards, which they have recently supplemented with newly planted rare apple and perry pear variety trees.