A LAMPETER councillor has voiced anger and alarm at a developer’s moves to demolish a Victorian school.

Residents of Bryn Road recently won their fight to block a bid by Tai Wales and West Housing Association to convert Ffynnonbedr School into flats when the planning application was thrown out by county planners.

During their campaign, locals had described the school “with its distinctive architecture and red brick frontage, as a notable landmark, located on one of the main thoroughfares of the town”.

They also claimed that recent months had seen a ‘substantial’ increase of police visits, arrests, overdoses, threatening behaviour and anti-social behaviour at properties managed by the housing association.

But, in a new twist, notices have now appeared on the site outlining plans by Hacer Developments Ltd to press ahead with the demolition of the school where generations of Lampeter schoolchildren were educated.

Hacer are development and planning consultants for Wales and West while the site is owned by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Cllr Hag Harris said householders were ‘both confused and alarmed by this move to demolish the old school buildings before any appeal process against the refusal of planning has been completed.

“This is the first time I have ever seen this legal planning device employed,” he told the Cambrian News.

“I have scrutinised Part 31 of the Town and Country Planning (general permitted development) Order 1995 and it seems that as long as Hacer Associates can satisfy the planning authority that the means of the demolition are appropriate and also the way that the site will be restored then they can move to demolish without applying for planning permission."

See this week’s South Ceredigion paper for the full story, available in shops and as a digital edition now