Pembrokeshire County Council - Review of Local Development Plan - Episode 1

This series (?!) of  posts will focus on the Local Development Plan Review (LDP2) for Pembrokeshire County Council.

Throughout the post(s) I will be using information from a variety of sources, but mostly from Pembrokeshire County Council's own website. I believe that my use of this is allowable under the terms of their copyright. If this is not correct, then I would be grateful if someone from the council would get in touch.

I will add in a few photographs that will add interest to what might be a lot of text!!

I cannot possibly cope with looking at the entire county so will focus, initially, on my own town of Pembroke Dock.

OK, let's start! If you want to read about the history of  LDP2, then the best place to go is here. This link is the overview page for LDP2. I would suggest that you have a look at this first as it explains the reasoning for the review...…..

There are lots of links from the above page, but perhaps you might leave exploring those until a little later.

PCC has kindly produced many maps to illustrate the suggestions for LDP2. The map for Pembroke Dock is here. This link will allow you to download maps of the Pembroke Dock area. These maps show the locations of Candidate Sites that have been suggested by a variety of contributors.  These are numbered. The numbering refers to a table of the sites (Sites Table is here). The candidate sites are grouped by Parish/Town Council.

More on Candidate Sites a bit later!

What I suggest you do now is download the maps and the table from the links above and have a quick read! At the start of the Table booklet (110 pages!) there is an explanation of the colours and content of the tables that follow. There is also mention of the "Preferred Strategy" that tries to explain the criteria for the coloured categorisation of sites in the table. Despite being a council tax payer who has a passionate interest in Pembrokeshire, I missed the initial "informal" consultations for LDP2. 

One important rule in these matters is ALWAYS take an active interest in local plans. Also, remember that "informal" means that discussions have taken place that might possibly be binding, but no minutes etc have been taken. It never means "nothing has been decided".


To start with we will look at the Barrack Hill in Pembroke Dock. The Barrack Hill was named after the Defensible Barracks that were built on this dominating high point overlooking the old Royal Dockyard, Pembroke.


This was open land with very few trees or bushes whilst the dockyard was in operation. There could be no hiding places for attacking troops to sneak up on the Barracks - indeed, when the Barracks were built, many of the houses in Cross Park were cleared to provide an open field of fire from the fort.

Anyway, I am digressing wildly... on to business!

If you look at the maps for Pembroke Dock from the PCC web pages mentioned above, pages 6 and 7 cover the area of the Barrack Hill and the former Oil Tanks Depot above Llanreath. Page 7 shows a greyed out area on the lower northern slopes of "The Hill", allocated the number 324.




The description of this site can be found on page 71(of 110) of the Candidate Site Register. See the cutting below.

So let's see what they say about Site 324.

Working from left to right, we see that this is "SPGC site 5 - Between the 10th fairway of the golf" - this entry leaves us hanging. Hopefully it will be finshed off at some point, but the map shows us where it is. Next, the nearest settlement is given as "Pembroke Dock/Doc Penfro". Fair enough.

Then we are given the name of the person who has proposed this site (Site 324) - "John Parsons" - I know not who this is.

No agent or agent organisation is mentioned, but the Current Use is "Leisure - Golf Course and scrubland".

The proposed use is proposed as "Holiday Accommodation" - (Tents? Caravans? Houses? - who knows), has an area of 1.48 acres and is coloured Grey - the colour of fog, I suppose. If you refer back to the top of the Candidate Site Register there is a key to the colours used in the table. In their words...

and

So that is your starter. Please feel free to comment if you wish. I will moderate the comments, but will publish all, but will redact swear words or insulting material. Be polite - it is the best way to be - politely assertive.

In the next instalment, I will look at some of the other Candidate Sites and mention other sources that can be used to find out a little more about the LDP2.