Councillors told to approve £49million school building

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Planning committee on Thursday, October 31 councillors are expected to decide a planning application for a new secondary campus at Ysgol Bro Hyddgen – the combined primary and secondary school  in the town.

As well as a school building the proposal includes demolishing the current campus, a 3G sports pitches, athletics facilities, outdoor performance space, play area, new access, vehicle and cycle parking and associated works.

The application is in front of the committee as it is deemed to be “major application,” and because the council is also the applicant.

An issue identified with the proposal is that the site is in a flood zone and is seen as a “highly vulnerable” development.

Principal planning officer Richard Edwards said: “It is noted the site already has planning permission for use as a school with Natural Resources Wales (NRW) having reviewed the submitted Flood Consequence Assessment.

“NRW welcome the proposal as it is considered a betterment in relation to the existing situation where the current school is located in an area of high flood risk from the school stream watercourse and surface water flooding.”

Mr Edwards goes on his report to recommend that councillor approve the application and place a number of conditions on the planning permission.

Getting the proposals for a new school building to this stage has been a long and often frustrating journey.

Earlier this year Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic and environment had been asked to list the current Ysgol Bro Hyddgen building.

Following investigations Cadw decided that they would not go ahead with the listing, as they did not see any “really innovative” part of the building worthy of raising it to the level of national interest.

This finally allowed the council to formally lodge the scheme with the local planning authority in May.

The proposal for the new school campus was originally estimated to cost £23 million and has been worked on by the council since 2017.

The original Bro Hyddgen project fell foul of the collapse of construction firm Dawnus in 2019 which led to revised and bigger proposals from the then Independent/Conservative administration.

Due to ballooning costs, in October 2022, the new Liberal Democrat/Labour Cabinet chose to downsize the plans.

The new campus had been set to include library and leisure facilities which had been estimated to cost £48 million in 2020, but by October 2022 this had shot up to £66 million.

Dropping the leisure centre from the project is supposed to see costs fall  to £49.12 million with 65 per cent of the funding coming from the Welsh Government.

The revised business case was agreed by the Welsh Government in January 2023, and it was hoped that the new school will be built and be open to pupils in 2026.