AN application to replace a fence that has failed to secure the site of Gwent Police’s now demolished former headquarters with hoardings has been approved.
The force and construction firm Wilmot Dixon was given permission in 2023 to put up fencing and hoarding around the former police headquarters beside the main A4042 Croeysceiliog bypass between Newport and Cwmbran.
Their planning consultants asked Torfaen Borough Council for permission to replace a section of heras – or heavy-duty wire mesh – fencing along 200 metres of the site boundary beside Turnpike Road with 2.4m high hoardings.
The planning department has now approved the application which was made due to the heras fencing “proving inadequate to stop incidents of trespass into the site.”
The former police headquarters site is listed in Torfaen’s current development plan, approved in 2013, as a potential housing site and permission was given in 2020 for new housing on the adjoining former County Hall site.
A planning application for a new police custody suite at the former headquarters was submitted earlier this year, which is still under consideration by the planning department, but the Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office said no decision on whether the development should go ahead will be taken until 2026 with the planning application intended to help establish the proposal’s viability.