The owner of a listed former church on the edge of Newport has seen his hopes of opening a cafe dashed.

Some members of Newport City Council’s planning committee were sympathetic to Richard Cox’s ambitions, but a majority agreed with officers’ recommendations to refuse permission for the project at Castleton Baptist Church.

Council planners said they were concerned about a lack of extraction equipment in the proposals – but also said installing it would be problematic given the building’s listed status, as well as potential odour and noise issues for neighbours.

Mr Cox said he had no intention of cooking in the proposed cafe, which would sell “coffee, cakes and tea”.

He told the committee he was a “local businessman that just wants to make a living”, and had “spent hundreds of thousands” on the “amazing and stunning” former church.

His cafe plans represented a “perfect use of the building”, he claimed.

The church’s ground floor is currently approved for office use, and senior planning officer Andrew Ferguson warned that a change of use to a cafe was broad, and would be difficult to control in future if Mr Cox or another owner wanted to offer a different range of products.

Cllr John Reynolds said the officers seemed to be concerned about “what might happen in the future, rather than what might happen now”.

Fellow committee member Cllr Gavin Horton – who also runs a cafe in Newport – said some modern kitchen equipment didn’t require extraction systems.

He asked whether the council could control what equipment could be used at the site, now or in the future, using planning conditions.

But Mr Ferguson said it was “really difficult” to impose highly specific conditions on cooking methods without impacting unfairly on the applicant or neighbours.

Some 19 of the 21 nearby residents had objected to the proposed redevelopment, planning officer Stephen Williams told the committee.

Speaking at the meeting, village resident Martin Allen claimed the cafe would be “detrimental to Castleton”.

He said villages in the area had grown in population, but improvements to the road network had not kept pace, and the nearby A48 is “extremely busy”.

An increase in traffic to a cafe would “exacerbate” problems, Mr Allen alleged.

The committee heard there were three road crashes involving injuries near the site between 2019 and 2021.

Council transport engineer Kevin Jackson said the location of the crashes meant they were “not really relevant to the church”.

But Cllr Trevor Watkins said he had concerns about “vehicles coming off there at 50mph, and that junction is very difficult to see coming out from the Baptist church”.

He also suggested the proposed cafe could be more reliant on trade from passing drivers if neighbours appeared opposed to the plans.

The committee voted 5-2, with one abstention, to refuse planning permission for the project.

Mr Ferguson said the applicant had the right to appeal the decision or to resubmit proposals for the site.