Green light for new estate with 42 affordable homes

Richard Youle, Local Democracy Reporter

Plans for 84 new homes, half of which will be affordable, have been given the go-ahead subject to further environmental checks.

The development, planned for the Carmarthen West site on the outskirts of Carmarthen, has been approved by Carmarthenshire Council’s planning committee and will include houses and flats ranging from one to four bedrooms.

The wider Carmarthen West site has been earmarked for around 1,100 homes – some of which have already been built – as well as a new primary school.

The 84-home scheme off Ffordd Pendre remains subject to a revised assessment of its potential impact on the River Towy and Carmarthen Bay special areas of conservation being authorised by Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

Although the development is planned by Lovell Partnerships Ltd the council will submit the revised assessment as set out in legislation.

Lovell Partnerships will also need to pay the council £458,178 towards a link road that’s been built and the provision of a new primary school in the area.

The 84 properties will be one-bedroom to four-bedroom with 25 available for social rent and 17 low-cost ownership ones.

Council planning officer John Thomas told the committee the planned estate was low-density and would come with a “very pleasant” landscaped area and retained hedgerows. Surface water run-off would go to a basin and a soakaway onsite.

Sewage would go to a network that drains into Welsh Water’s Parc y Splott wastewater treatment works off Llansteffan Road. The treatment works is failing to comply with a certain wastewater performance standard, a committee report said, and to offset the extra sewage load on the system from the houses surface water is to be removed from a combined public sewer on council land at St Mary’s Primary School.

Cllr Russell Sparks said housing was much-needed and commended the significant affordable housing element but was “slightly concerned” about any effect on the River Towy given NRW has predicted salmon could be extinct in some Welsh rivers by 2030. NRW said last week it had a number of ongoing enforcement and compliance investigations within the Towy catchment.

School

Cllr Sparks said the primary school proposed as part of the wider Carmarthen West site was welcome. “We’ve got a significant community growing which needs a school,” he said.

Mr Thomas said school contributions from developers were being collected by the council and it would be up to the authority’s education department to submit an application for a school in due course.

Cllr Jean Lewis asked if a new health surgery was going to be considered for the Carmarthen West site. Mr Thomas said a doctors’ surgery had relocated to Parc Dewi Sant, which is the other side of Ffordd Pendre.

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