A FURTHER three years has been granted to bring forward plans for a hotel next to Coleg Gwent’s sixth form college in Cwmbran.
The Torfaen Learning Zone was granted planning permission in September 2018 and while the campus has opened land where outline permission for a food and drinks unit, offices and a hotel approved as part of the same application remains undeveloped.
The plans allow for a hotel with up to 65 beds and between 4,432 and d 5,654 square meters of office space with 226 car parking spaces – 95 of these would be for the hotel and food and drink unit and 135 spaces for the offices. The site is also close to Cwmbran train station.
The permission had given the Welsh Government, which had made the application, three years from September 2018 to bring forward detailed plans for the undeveloped land east of St Davids Road. The site is between the college, which was built next to the Morrisons Supermarket, and the Meritor factory.
The Welsh Government applied for an extension in May 2021, four months before the permission expired, and it has now been granted.
The borough council had referred the Welsh Government’s application for an extension to the Welsh Government as it was considered to be a “highly vulnerable development” in a flood zone.
But officials decided the application isn’t at odds with national or local planning policies and it could be determined by the local authority.
Its planning officers said assessments submitted as part of the previous application, which gave approval for the college, concluded while the site isn’t free of risk of flooding from a nearby river all buildings were out of reach of the waters, which would only be at shallow depths.
They also said the permission for the previous application should support renewing the permission.
Any detailed planning application will also have to include a sustainable drainage application, to show how surface water will be dealt with, while the design of the site would be a reserved matter if the final plans are approved.