BURRY PORT REDEVELOPMENT DEFERRED

A decision on ambitious plans to redevelop a large area of Burry Port has been deferred after a last-minute Welsh Government intervention.

Today’s meeting of Carmarthenshire County Council’s planning committee had been due to consider six planning applications – for up to 230 homes at the former Grillo site, for infrastructure for that site, for a 134 unit housing development alongside the former Grillo site, for construction of a 330-place Welsh Medium Primary School off Burrows Terrace, for a commercial leisure development at Burry Port Harbour East, for employment space alongside Silver Terrace.

Head of planning Eifion Bowen told the meeting that he had yesterday received an e-mail from the Welsh Government referring to a letter from 2010 instructing the authority not to approve the Grillo application. This was in response to a request by a third party to call in the applications.

Then this morning, shortly before the planning committee Mr Bowen received an email from the Welsh Government directing the local authority giving formal notice under Article 18 that it was not in a position to approve any of the six applications including the school.

He told the committee it could consider the applications but if in favour could only say it was minded to approve the schemes. The alternative was to defer a decision and visit the sites, which the Planning Committee resolved to do.

There is a long history to the issue with Welsh Government maps showing the area, at one time, liable to flooding. The County Council challenged this but the maps could not be changed in time for the area to be included in the Local Development Plan.

The planning committee has decided to write to the Welsh Government expressing concern at the short notice given before the meeting and is asking the Executive Board member for regeneration and leisure to write separately.

Mr Bowen said after the meeting: “We are obliged by law now not to grant permission, so that the Minister can give careful consideration to the issues that prompted the stopper notice. Flooding is one of the concerns.”