THE long running saga of an ‘eyesore’ house in Newport has cost Pembrokeshire Coast National Park £77,000.

At an authority meeting last week monitoring officer John Parsons presented his report into the planning process of Bettws Newydd.

Mr Parsons found a number of mistakes had been made during the planning process which resulted in a house larger than anticipated being built.

Mr Parsons highlighted 15 shortcomings in the process and has put forward 13 recommended changes which “present clear and significant management challenges for the future”.

“It is fundamental to the performance of this authority in future that it recognises its shortcomings and is resolved to take all action in its power to prevent a repetition,” he told members on Wednesday.

He also said that it was the most serious case he had had to look at since he had been in post.

“By any objective standards this case has highlighted a large number of shortcomings. In my opinion there was a failure in the decision-making process,” he added.

Authority chief executive Tegryn Jones said significant changes had already been made to procedures since 2006.

The chairman of the development management committee, Michael Williams said, “there is no doubt serious mistakes were made” but lessons had been learnt.

Mr Parsons’ report indicated that the views of Newport Town Council had not been given ‘due regard’ and some members felt an official apology should be made to the council.

He found that plans approved in 2006 were not of the standard required today but the system at the time was also not applied rigorously to the application and “its inadequacies should have led to an initial rejection”.

Other problems include a lack of awareness of what was happening on site, failure to react to information from the public, imposing conditions on the consent and then not enforcing them, and failure to agree and record levels on site.

Park 'learns its lessons'

Development management committee chairman Richard Howells said the authority accepted that in the case of Bettws Newydd it failed to meet the high standard of performance it sets itself.

“We acknowledge that there are lessons to be learned from this case. We had previously acknowledged that reviews of some of our procedures were necessary and, since 2006, we have taken significant steps to ensure the standards we set in providing a robust planning service are maintained and indeed improved.”

He said these included a new mandatory validation process which requires applicants to provide very specific information before their application can be accepted by the authority.

This also includes a requirement for clarifying construction levels at the outset – one of the key causes for complaint in the Bettws Newydd case.