Public inquiry over Valleys homes plan

The inquiry concerns an outline planning application which was made in May last year to Torfaen council for 53 houses to be built on grazing land near Varteg Road.

According to a report before Torfaen's planning committee this week, an appeal was submitted to the National Assembly of Wales in August last year by Llewellyn and Clark against non-determination of the application and who requested that it go to a public inquiry.

The council's report says that after the plan for outline planning permission was submitted, it sought an archaeological assessment of the site by Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust last July.

This was so it could consider any possible archaeological impacts from the proposal.

The report, by the council's head of development control Richard Lewis, states that an archaeological study was submitted by Llewellyn and Clark to the council on August 20 who then lodged the appeal with the National Assembly four days later.

The council said the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust were at that point still reviewing the information.

The report explains how the site, which lies to the south of Salisbury Terrace, was allocated as an area for the residential development of 53 dwellings within the Torfaen Local Plan in 2000 but that work to the Local Development Plan is now proposing to tighten the urban boundary in the area which would see this particular site fall outside the urban area.

The site was therefore dismissed as a potential housing development within the Local Development Plan on the grounds that development of the whole site would alter the character of Varteg.

The appeal investigation by the National Assembly started in April and it requested an environmental statement.

This concluded that the proposed development might have a "very slight" and indirect adverse impact on the Blaenavon World Heritage Site.

The public inquiry will now take place at County Hall in Cwmbran on October 5 and 6.