Plans for new village of 800 homes remain stalled

Richard Youle, local democracy reporter

Proposals for a new village of 800 homes remain stalled six years after the Welsh Government first submitted plans for it.

The land adjacent to a businesses park north of the M4, near Felindre and Tircoed, was one of a handful of “strategic development areas” which was earmarked for growth by Swansea Council in its planning blueprint for the county.

This blueprint, called the local development plan (LDP), took years to put together before being approved by the Welsh Government and then formally adopted in February, 2019.

The previous summer, in 2018, the Welsh Government had submitted an outline planning application to the council for the new village – to be called Pentre Felindre – which would consist of 800 homes, a new primary school, two shops, a village hall, recreational areas and improvements to one of two roads leading to it. A fifth of the houses and flats were to be classed as affordable.

Vibrant

The stated vision for Pentre Felindre was a “vibrant and sustainable new village with a strong sense of community, where people will choose to live, work and spend their leisure time, and which will complement the plans for the adjoining strategic employment site”. At the time it was expected that the 800 homes would be built from 2020-21 onwards with Pentre Felindre finished in 2028-29.

The adjacent employment site, Parc Felindre, hasn’t attracted anything like the number of businesses expected, despite years of marketing, although delivery firm DPD has relocated there.

Planning experts also identified issues with the Pentre Felindre land, such as areas prone to flooding, the presence of a high-pressure water main and electricity pylons, and noise from the M4, but such constraints aren’t uncommon when undeveloped land is brought forward for housing.

Masterplan

The Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021 halted all manner of projects, and in December, 2021, the Welsh Government said it was still working on a masterplan for Pentre Felindre with the council – its joint venture partners on the project – and commissioning updated reports on the site’s constraints.

In the meantime, house-building completions in Swansea are falling behind schedule. The LDP set out the need for 15,600 new homes over 15 years – an average of 1,040 per year – but the council’s planning committee was told last autumn that only 47% of the target cumulative had at that point been met. One of several reasons for this was that no ground had been broken at Pentre Felindre.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked the Welsh Government for an update on Pentre Felindre. It said work had continued to better understand the site’s constraints and that the land was being put forward for housing as part of the council’s replacement LDP. “We are currently assessing the site’s development viability and working with our joint venture partners, Swansea Council, we hope to be able to make an announcement on the future of the site in the coming months,” it said.

The council said the outline planning application wouldn’t go forward for determination until the Welsh Government updated its proposals.

Well-connected

Pentre Felindre would be well-connected to the M4, and future residents might one day benefit from a railway station on the Swansea District Line at Felindre – a project that was dangled to leaders in the area in 2019 by then Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns. Swansea Council leader Rob Stewart said at the time he could only support the £20 million station plan if it did not reduce the frequency of services to the city’s High Street station and was part of more comprehensive transport investment in Swansea and the surrounding area.

Momentum for a new Felindre train station has grown along with proposals for other new rail stations serving the north of county on the freight-carrying Swansea District Line. Speaking last year, a Transport for Wales officer told a group of councillors that creating new stations on the line was the “top unfunded” rail project in Wales in his view. The plan forms part of a wider transport strategy called the Swansea Bay and West Wales Metro, but central Government funding would be crucial.