New Maesydre school blocks footpath

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

A public footpath in Welshpool has been extinguished to allow the building of a new school to happen.

At a meeting of the Powys County Council Planning, Taxi Licensing and Rights of Way Committee, councillors were told that part of public footpath B59, would need to be “stopped up”.

This is because part of it goes behind the former Ysgol Maesydre and the former Howell Drive site of Welshpool’s Church in Wales (CIW) primary school.

Staff and pupils of the CIW primary school moved from the site earlier this year to their new school building on Salop Road, near Welshpool High School.

This allows building work to take place at Maesydre to turn it into a 150-place modern school building for Welsh medium primary school, Ysgol Gymraeg y Trallwng.

If the application was refused, construction work to turn it into a new home for Ysgol Gymraeg y Trallwng could not go ahead.

PCC registration and definitive maps officer, Clare Lewis explained: “This relates to an application submitted by the school’s service and affects county council owned land.

“Footpath B59 is affected by the development that has been given planning permission by committee on December 3 last year, and is for a Welsh medium school with associated landscaping and car park.

“It is proposed to make a stopping up order to extinguish part of the footpath.”

She explained that 154 metres of the path up to the boundary fence with the A483 trunk road which passes the town would need to be deleted.

Mrs Lewis said that there had not been any objections to the proposal and that Welshpool Town Council at a meeting earlier this year had discussed and supported making the order.

She explained that when the road had been built 27 years ago, the footpath was “severed” and that there was no access to the footpath to the east of the A483.

Ms Lewis told the committee that other options to divert the path across neighbouring land were explored, but these were not feasible due to the need to gain consent from third party landowners.

“It is considered that the legal criteria for the stopping up order has been met,” said Ms Lewis.

Welshpool Councillor Phil Pritchard, knows the area well and said: “At the end of the day this is a straightforward situation, the path is going nowhere and the carriageway is too dangerous. I support it wholeheartedly.

“If you’re interested to know, just a mile up the road is Welshpool airport. Believe it or not we still have two rights of way across it. Nobody tries to walk it, but they are still there and have never been removed.”

Councillors voted unanimously in favour of the recommendation.