A FORMER pub in Oakdale can be knocked down and replaced with 26 “affordable” apartments, Caerphilly County Borough Council’s planning committee has ruled.
The decision comes following local opposition to the plans, and concerns from some councillors about the amount of parking that will be provided for the future residents.
One councillor said claims that future occupiers wouldn’t rely on their own cars were like “Orwellian Newspeak”.
The New Forge, in Brynhoward Terrace, closed six years ago and is now “boarded up”, the committee heard at a meeting on Wednesday July 10.
Applicant the Castell Group intends to demolish the existing building and redevelop the land by building two apartment blocks, along with new “landscaped access, parking [and] public open space”.
Planning officer Elizabeth Rowley said the New Forge had been “subject to vandalism on numerous occasions” since it closed, and the proposed new homes would “make a positive contribution to the streetscene… [and] provide much-needed affordable homes for the area”.
But the committee also heard from a resident who lives near the New Forge, who objected to the plans over privacy concerns.
“There are 26 windows proposed to look into my bedroom,” she said. “I will have no privacy.”
She told the committee “I just want a happy life” and alleged the new development is “just there purely for profit”.
Abi Hawke, an agent for Castell Group, argued the case for the development, and described the New Forge as being “in a state of disrepair”.
She said the “robust proposal” would bring 26 “affordable dwellings” to a “vacant and very much unused site”.
Some members of the planning committee raised concerns about the parking situation at the new apartments, where one unallocated space will be provided for each household, plus one extra visitor space, totalling 27 spaces.
Cllr Nigel Dix questioned the usefulness of planning policies that favour walking and cycling over private vehicle ownership, and said the term to describe this – so-called “modal shift” – “sounds a bit like Orwellian Newspeak”, the language used by party members in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“People will always want to have the freedom of a vehicle,” Cllr Dix said.
Cllr Kristian Woodland claimed “obviously public transport isn’t up to the standard to support people” living at the new homes, if they don’t have their own cars.
