Councillor calls Caerphilly hotel plan ‘pie-in-the-sky’

Plaid Cymru councillor James Fussell, who is also a member of Caerphilly Town Council, called plans for a hotel in Park Lane “the pie-in-the-sky option”.

The comments were made during a Caerphilly council joint scrutiny committee meeting on February 22 in a discussion about the council’s place-shaping plans.

An aerial shot of Caerphilly Castle with the proposed hotel site ringed in red

Proposals for a 70-bedroom hotel near Caerphilly Castle were first revealed in 2019, but the meeting heard the developers behind the plan have now pulled out.

Labour councillor Sean Morgan, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for economy and enterprise, said there was a “strong interest” in the plan initially but that the coronavirus pandemic had led to the developers withdrawing from the scheme.

Cllrs Sean Morgan and James Fussell

However Cllr Morgan said the council is now looking to demolish a Specsavers building “to make the site even more attractive to a potential developer”.

The £10-million hotel has been listed as a potential development in the coming years in the council’s place-shaping plans.

In the meeting, Cllr Fussell said: “I was the recipient of an email from an officer who advised me on Friday that . . . shall we say I will call it the pie-in-the-sky option of developing a four-star hotel at Park Lane.

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“There was a meeting in March 2019 which was held by Cadw, Welsh Government officers, county borough officers and the Welsh tourism agency and the comment there was that this was effectively “a dead duck.””

Cllr Fussell went on to say that he would like to see the area which is currently wasteland “opened up”, but he said that “nothing has moved forward”.

The proposed site for the development in Park Lane

At a full council meeting on February 24, Cllr Morgan called the comments ‘pessimistic.’

But Cllr Fussell said he was quoting a Welsh tourism official at a meeting in March 2019, and Cllr Morgan apologised for ‘misinterpreting’ the comment.

However at a meeting on Tuesday, Cllr Morgan retracted his apology and said that Cllr Fussell had been “as negative as I remembered”.

He called for an apology to be made at the next meeting over the issue.

Cllr Fussell told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the comment was “borne out of frustration” that the original plans for the hotel are not going ahead.

“Hands up I obviously said what I said, but it was not said in isolation at the meeting,” he said.

“Above all the comment was made out of frustration and disappointment that the hotel is not going ahead.”