REVISED plans for an estate of 25 “eco-homes” will be opposed by a council which has failed to decide the application itself.
Instead the proposals, by a Cwmbran-based developer, will be decided by a planning inspector with the applicant having opted to start the appeal process as Torfaen Borough Council’s planning department failed to make a decision within the statutory eight-week period.
Council planning officer Justin Jones that is because the applicant hasn’t provided further details requested by the planning department.
The plan include four-metre high gabion walls, that are packed with either stones or soil, alongside an existing public footpath on the edge of the sloping site known as Tyr Ywen Farm at Ty Canol Way in Greenmeadow on the edge of Cwmbran’s special landscape area.
“This would be a significant change and urbanisation,” said Mr Jones.
“We’ve asked the applicant to provide greater detail of how it would affect that path. It needs to be carefully considered and those details are not there for us to make a decision and why the application hasn’t been determined.”
An earlier plan for the same site was refused by the planning committee in 2022 with six grounds for refusal and Mr Jones said the revised application was intended to overcome those.
The number of buildings had also been reduced as five homes would now be in a block of flats instead.
But the planning department asked the committee to endorse four reasons it will put forward to the planning inspector refusal.
Those are a lack of local facilities nearby or walking and cycling routes from the site, the development is inappropriate on the semi-rural edge of town, the development would “irreversibly eradicate” the rural setting of the grade II listed Tyr Y Wen barn and Tyr Y Wen Farmhouse and a failure to demonstrate a suitable urban drainage scheme could be achieved.
Mr Jones said there are no walking and cycling routes and the current footpath is unlit. He said this put the scheme at odds with current Welsh planning policy to reduce the use of private vehicles.
Pontnewydd Labour councillor Stuart Ashley said: “There would be a four-metre drop at the bottom of the garden for some people, that’s 20 foot, a hell of a drop for somebody’s garden around here, although in Bristol they are used to it. I say that as I used to have a 20 foot drop at the bottom of my garden in Bristol, it was a Civil War battlement, but there’s not a lot like that in Cwmbran.”
Labour member for Llanfrechfa and Ponthir, Karl Gauden, said: “This seems to be somebody asking the same question and expecting a different answer.”
The committee endorsed the officer’s recommendations for refusal and planning committee chair, Panteg Labour member Norma Parrish, said the committee would have refused the application.