BISHOP'S Stortford's Thorley Lane development has won a design award for being the best in England and Northern Ireland on a greenfield site.

Design Awards described the 100-home community as 'a convincing piece of urban design with a proper sense of place'.

Development architectural firm Melville Dunbar Associates accepted the award from planning and construction minister Beverley Hughes.

They also accepted the honour on behalf of developer and contractor Countryside Properties plc and planner East Herts District Council.

Award judges praised the designers for carefully blending groups of dwellings with exceptional landscaping and planning, to produce a 'defiantly historical' part of town.

Awards organiser, the Birmingham and Midland Institute, said the development overcame planning demands to develop a successful planning framework.

'To the east a formal square forms the nucleus of a group of three storey town houses. To the west the character changes with the creation of a village street and green, with cars tucked away in garage courts accessed through discreet openings in street frontages', they said.

Countryside Properties corporate communications manager Guy Lambert said Thorley Lane was part of the larger 900-home St Michaels Mead development launched in 1996.

He said: 'We're absolutely thrilled that the development has been recognised in this way. It justifies the quality, depth of thinking, and work that has been put into the various developments.'