Councillor likens loss-making business park to Dragon’s Den investment

Twm Owen, Local Democracy Reporter

A councillor has described a loss-making business park his council bought for £7 million as an investment he’d snap up on Dragon’s Den.

Conservative Alistair Neill imagined himself as one of the big money investors on the hit BBC TV show as councillors were updated on council investments and its commercial property portfolio.

Those include the Castlegate Business Park which forecasts, from March this year, predict will generate a commercial loss of £206,550 during the 2026/27 financial year.

But councillors were told an existing tenant at the 217,000 square foot business park on the edge of Caldicot, which offers easy access to the M4, has signed a further five year lease while the council is also holding talks with the Cardiff Capital Region regarding its potential for supporting its efforts to expand the compound semiconductor sector.

The region, which brings the 10 councils in South East Wales together, has also included Castlegate in its investment prospectus and is working with the council on a pilot scheme to reduce energy costs for businesses.

Promising 

A report for the committee stated “constructive recent dialogue with Cardiff Capital Region has contributed to a number of promising recent enquiries”.

Cllr Neil told Monmouthshire County Council’s performance and overview scrutiny committee which he was chairing: “If this was Dragon’s Den I would think, ‘do you know what, this is probably a good investment’.”

Council deputy chief executive Peter Davies said an existing compound semiconductor firm is already an anchor tenant at Castlegate and the council is working with the capital region to “influence the right mix of tenants in the building” and described the business park as an “important strategic asset” held by the council which has control over which tenants can occupy it.

The report said the business park currently has an 85 per cent occupancy rate, and 31,000 square foot of vacant space, and the council also lets out smaller offices, marketed as Mon Space, with eight of nine units currently occupied. The business park according to the council, supports around 300 jobs.

The council’s return on investment from Castlegate was minus 2.8 per cent as of April 2026, which has deteriorated from the minus 1.81 figure the previous year, and the report said performance is “significantly below” the target set when the council purchased the site in 2018.

However the Newport Leisure Park, which the council bought for £22.5m in 2019, continues to generate a profit and is expected to produce a 2.4 per cent return on investment this financial year.

The leisure park, in Spytty which is home to the Cineworld Cinema, earned the council £294,613 profit in the 2025/26 financial year and since the council purchased them both sites have generated a total income of £1,836,832 above borrowing repayments.

Total annual borrowing costs of £1,471,674 continue to be met in full while combined gross income for all investment and commercial assets, which also includes industrial units, other office space, small retail units, county farms and a solar farm, during 2025/26 was £3.871m.

Strong performance 

Councillor Ben Callard, the Labour cabinet member for finance, said: “We’ve had strong performance of assets most notably Newport Leisure Park.”

Labour councillor Jill Bond challenged the decision, made by the previous Conservative council administration, to purchase the leisure site within Newport City Council’s boundaries.

But it was defended by Cllr Callard despite him saying he wasn’t convinced by the decision to buy the site, made before he was first elected in 2022: “My view has since changed. It does provide a significant income for the authority which we would otherwise have to fund from somewhere else.”

Nick Keys, head of landlord services, said the council has ceased similar purchases and if it intended to do so it would require a decision by the full council.