Wrexham town centre apartment plans refused despite fears it could hamper town’s regeneration

Plans to create almost 40 apartments around a former Wrexham nightclub have been refused, despite concerns it could hamper regeneration efforts in the town.

Councillors met online yesterday (Monday, 4 January) to discuss proposals to convert the first and second floors of an old night spot on the corner of Brook Street, now known as the Central Buildings, into 10 apartments.

It would also have seen a new four-storey building housing 28 apartments constructed on a connecting area on Bridge Street.

Refusal of the scheme was recommended after Natural Resources Wales (NRW) highlighted that the site is located within a flood risk area near the River Gwenfro, where there are no major defences in place.

Wrexham Council’s planning committee previously deferred the decision to ask NRW to reconsider, but the agency said it was not willing to revisit the issue.

Politicians reluctantly agreed to reject the application by a majority vote after local councillor Alun Jenkins told them the derelict land had become a “blight” on the area.

He said: “The point that I want to make today is that this is an application that has much wider implications than just the sites that we’re talking about the bottom of Bridge Street.

“We’re talking about the implications of the C2 flood risk zone, which effectively blights the whole of an area very close to the town centre.

“If you look at the plan, you’ll see the extent of that. It goes all the way through from Island Green, all the way along Brook Street and past that to the area beneath the parish church.

“It has implications for a lot of proposals that we have for an area of the town, which is desperately in need of improvement.”

Cllr Jenkins called for the decision to again be delayed to allow meetings to take place between developers who own sites in the area, along with the council and NRW.

There are currently a number of empty plots along Bridge Street, Brook Street and St Giles Way.

The land earmarked for the new building has been vacant since several shops were bought and demolished by the Welsh Development Agency in partnership with the council in the early 2000s.

Cllr Rodney Skelland proposed that the council should indicate to the Welsh Government that it would be minded to approve the scheme, with ministers likely to call the decision in due to the flood risk if it was supported.

He said: “This site is such a derelict site. Something’s got to be done and decisions have got to be made.

“You can’t leave it like it is forever and it’s not that difficult to raise the site or whatever you have to do to engineer your way out of the situation.

“The only time I can remember any sort of water near that site was when the Rivulet Road culvert blocked 15 years or so ago.

“Personally, I think they should (NRW) should work with developers and work with the council to help regenerate this side of Wrexham.”

The local authority’s chief planning officer Lawrence Isted wrote to NRW after the plans were deferred during the summer, with a view to discussing the site’s flood risk status.

However, the agency said it did not believe there would be any benefit to reconsidering the C2 flood zone designation given the conflict with current planning guidance.

Cllr Paul Pemberton agreed that it should be refused, despite expressing regrets about the state of the area.

He said: “It’s one of the main routes into town and if you come down and look either way, it’s terrible.

“I don’t know what the answer is. It can’t go ahead as it is because of the flood risk, but it’s about time we all got our act together and had a chat with all the developers to try and work together to achieve some common sense.”

The majority of the committee voted to refuse permission for the plans at the end of the debate.

By Liam Randall – BBC Local Democracy Reporter