Decision on county’s first mosque put on hold

Twm Owen, Local Democracy Reporter

A decision to allow a former library that was targeted with anti-Muslim vandalism to be used as a Welsh county’s first mosque has been put on hold.

The disused grade II listed Carnegie Library, in Abergavenny, was set to be brought back into use by the Monmouthshire Muslim Community Association as a community centre and the county’s first mosque.

Though Monmouthshire County Council’s cabinet had agreed it would offer the association a 30-year lease on the building that was last used as a pupil referral unit that decision will now have to go back to the cabinet which has 10 working days to meet and reconsider.

A council committee meeting, called after three opposition councillors objected, could have accepted the decision but in a tied vote agreed to refer it back to the cabinet on the casting vote of scrutiny chair Jane Lucas.

Some 48 hours before Wednesday’s pre-arranged meeting the building, on the edge of the town centre, was vandalised with the words ‘No Masjid” sprayed on one of its walls and crosses beside the doors along with the word ‘no’. Masjid is Arabic for place of worship or mosque.

The committee cited nine reasons, following its three hour meeting which included more than 30 minutes in a confidential session due to discussion around finances, why the cabinet should reconsider the decision.

During the meeting the Labour cabinet member for finance, Cllr Ben Callard, who lives near the proposed mosque, defended how the former library had been declared as surplus to the council’s requirements, last November, at a cabinet meeting and then the decision to grant the lease was also taken to the cabinet.

If councillors disagreed with disposal of the building the November decision should have been called in, said Cllr Callard.

He said taking the decisions in public had given them “oxygen” but disputed all leases could be subject to full public consultation.

The Llanfoist and Govilon councillor said: “I don’t see how we can as a landlord enter leases if we have to bring them to a scrutiny committee.”

Cllr Callard since 2022 the council has entered 37 leases, with the figure rising to 63 when also considering short term arrangements and licences, and said: “For no others was there a demand to review them or for prior scrutiny or to use the call in process.”

He also defended the terms of the lease, agreed in principle at a £6,000 a year rent, and said it was on a “full repair basis” and said: “That doesn’t make it very attractive to businesses. It’s a huge commitment to take on a building of that age.”

Councillors had questioned the value of the lease as an earlier council document stated an ambition of raising a rental income of £25,000 to £30,000 a year from the former library.

The council’s landlord serives manager, Nick Keys, said leases of 25, 30 and 99 years are common for the council to grant, with long term security often required by grant funding bodies such as the National Lottery, and the 30 year lease was requested.

Mr Keys added the council also has clauses such as rent reviews. Final terms of the lease were still to be agreed.

Conservative member for Shirenewton Louise Brown, one of the three councillors who called the decision in, questioned why the invitation to tender hadn’t specified the building could be used for commercial purposes under its restrictive covenant.

Llanelly Hill independent Simon Howarth said members weren’t aware of decisions related to the library as they hadn’t been added to the council’s forward work planner.

Devauden Conseravive Rachel Buckler described the library building as one of Abergavenny’s “most important civic buildings.”

The committee said the cabinet should consider a re-tender with specifications including an independent valuation, a survey of the building, consideration of the building’s history and importance, a public consultation and the possibility of selling the building.

The library service was relocated to the Town Hall in 2015.