RESIDENTS of a row of houses in Blaina are “in shock” after finding out their homes could be demolished.

The development of one detached, two-storey house and six semi-detached homes was originally refused by Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council in 2014.

But this was later overturned by Welsh Government planning inspectors, and the homes were built.

But now, following an anonymous complaint, it has emerged the homes did not match the granted planning permission.

Developer D3 Property Developments has since lodged an amended planning application to be allowed to retain the homes, which came before the council’s Planning Committee on Thursday, July 22.

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Development team manager, Eirlys Hallett, explained that too many issues had been found, and they could not be dealt with in other ways such with non-material amendment applications.

The new application to retain the houses was supposed to solve all the problems, but road safety issues were now the issue.

Mrs Hallett, said: “Those issues are gradient of driveways and visibility.”

He report explained that the steep driveways meant there was a risk that cars would roll back into the road .

Visibility of the road from the driveways is also hampered.

Mrs Hallett, told the committee: “You are faced with the dilemma of approving this application despite the fact that it’s contrary to highways requirements.

“Or accept the officer’s recommendation and refuse it in the knowledge of the difficulties this is going to cause.

“Professionally I feel I have no option other than to follow the advice of the council’s highways officer and recommend that the planning application is refused.”

Andrew Pugh, who represented residents, spoke at the meeting: “Residents are in shock at how this was allowed to happen.”

He explained that numbers two to seven Rhes yr Ysgol  had all been occupied since September 2018, and then the complaint was made in November 2018.

Mr Pugh said “We weren’t to know about these issues.

“As far as we were aware everything was above board and legally transparent.

“As you can imagine the cost to ourselves if this gets turned down is going to be catastrophic, as we’ve all paid about £200,000 each for these houses.”

Peter Barnes, agent for the applicant, D3 Property Developments, told councillors that the developer had agreed to lower the drive walls to 1.05 metres to improve the road visibility.

“I appreciate this is last minute, but the alternative is to descend into chaos,” said Mr Barnes.

Highways officer, Mark Hopkins said that “in principle” lowering the walls would solve the problem.

But until plans “were in front of him” Mr Hopkins didn’t want to “commit himself” as to whether the proposal would be acceptable or not.

Cllr John Hill said: “This is very complicated case, we’re in a situation where we need to solve this and the answer can’t be demolishing the houses, we have to figure out a way of looking after those people.”

He believed the choice was approving the plan and asking for the work on the walls to be a condition of planning permission, or waiting for the wall lowering drawings to be submitted and then bring the application back to committee.

Cllr Wayne Hodgins asked whether it would be possible to defer the application to allow the alterations to take place.

Planning service development manager Steve Smith, said: “Yes, provided that highway danger can be mitigated.”

Mr Barnes said that plans would be drawn up, but the residents would still need to agree them.

Cllr Wayne Hodgins said: “I move that we defer the application and invite the agent to come back with a retrospective plan and also engage in dialogue with the relevant officers.”

This motion was backed by councillors  with on the condition that all parties “get together and try and sort things out.”

Once this has happened the application will come back to the committee for a decision at a future date.