A PLANNING saga over plans for new homes on the site of a former hospital is set to stretch into a twenty-second year. 

Permission to demolish the former Pontypool and District Hospital and build homes on the site in Pontnewynydd was first approved in March 2001 but planners are now being asked to grant a further extension so detailed plans can be brought forward. 

Proposals for 34 homes on the site were given the green light by councillors in 2016, after a previous applicant failed to reach a legal agreement with the Torfaen County Borough Council on the 2001 permission but had carried out some work on the site, including the demolition of the hospital which closed in 1994. 

However further legal wrangling meant the final permission on the 2016 application wasn’t approved either. 

That led to the plans going back before the planning committee three years later which again approved them subject to a legal agreement covering a contribution towards recreation and a children’s play area and affordable housing. 

The agreement with Torfaen council was eventually signed in December 2019, six months after the planning committee meeting, meaning that permission for the 34 homes and access points and infrastructure was in place. 

But applicant Darren Morgan, of Abercarn, has now asked the borough council for that outline planning permission to be extended. 

A condition of the December 2019 permission was the applicants had three years to bring forward an application covering the “reserved matters” which includes all the details of the application other than the access and layout. 

Mr Morgan, who along with Wayne Richards and Geminus Developments, of Rotherwas, Hereford, was a signature of the 2019 legal agreement, applied to Torfaen Council for an extension in November, a month ahead of the deadline for the reserved matters application. 

His description of his new application is “To extend our outline planning permission by as long as we can, possible five years.” 

In 2021 the South Wales Argus reported the land, with permission for 34 homes, was on sale for offers in excess of £900,000.  

Mr Morgan is listed on the December 2019 legal agreement as the owner of the site.