PLANS for a health and wellbeing centre in a Gwent town are still at their early stages, a councillor has been told.
A consultation on plans for a health and wellbeing centre on land at Osbaston Road in Monmouth has been run on behalf of the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board.
A purpose built new centre could include facilities such as GP services, treatment rooms and a community pharmacy.
Osbaston councillor Jane Lucas said residents are “very upset”.
She asked, at Monmouthshire County Council’s March meeting, why “they’d been denied on opportunity to share their views on the siting” of the centre in a consultation, that closed in the autumn, on Monmouthshire’s replacement local development plan which sets out where new housing, employment sites and community facilities should be built.
But cabinet member Paul Griffiths said that wasn’t the case as the health centre is being developed under the county council’s existing planning policy, and a full application has yet to be made.
The Labour councillor said: “This is a proposal from the health board for the site of a new primary care centre, in Osbaston, that will be developed within the existing local development plan, there is no proposal in the replacement local development plan and why it has not been a part of the consultation on the replacement local development plan.”
Cllr Griffiths said the planning application, when it is submitted, would be subject to “all the normal public consultations associated with that.”
Conservative Cllr Lucas said there are concerns over flooding and traffic and said: “Residents are clearly very upset about that and therefore feel a lot more thought and care needs to be given.”
She asked if Cllr Griffiths would meet with residents and he said he would have to take advice as he has to be mindful of being seen to “pre-determine” any planning application.
