WHY IS Torfaen council allowing itself to be blackmailed by the Welsh Government into continuing to build housing stock, even planning to build on the green belt at South Sebastopol?

If we really do need more houses in this area for people coming into the area to take up jobs that don’t exist why not build on the old Parke Davis site (especially as TCBC chose to ignore it for its new county hall). There are many other brownfield sites in Gwent (where industry used to be) that could have houses built on them. New houses have recently been built on the old Panteg works site, Pilkington’s Glass Works and new build is taking place on a green-field site in New Inn. With plans to build on the County hall site at Croesyceiliog, should we at least try to learn from the huge mistakes made and still being made by Newport by way of strategic planning?

Some of the industry we have lost includes Parke Davis, Rechem, Trico, Pilkington, Panteg Steel Works, Saunders Valve, GKN, Alfa Laval, Sebie Gorman, Lin-pac, Whiteheads, Big Batteries, etc. So why in any sense and reason would anyone want to build on the greenfield site at South Sebastopol, especially as planning consent has already been refused previously?

Bruce Heywood-Bell The Highway Croesyceiliog