A trader in Cwmbran’s Marketplace (‘In Shops’) says the owners of Cwmbran town centre should be held “accountable” for a planning commitment they made to support them to move to new locations when it closes at the end of June.
Simon Martyn has run his butcher’s shop from the site since April 2024. An application was submitted on 13 March 2025 by L&C Investments Ltd, the owners of ‘M Cwmbran’ to turn the site into an indoor adventure park – meaning the current independent traders would be evicted.
L&C said the number of traders had fallen, and along with rising costs, the site was no longer viable as an indoor market.
There were eight objections (and 18 in support) to the application, including two summarised comments of: “Businesses inside have nowhere to go” and “if Cwmbran shopping can find somewhere in town for the local businesses, there would be no objection.”
Application approved on 16 May
The application was approved on 16 May, and in response to the objections, the applicant said: “LCP, part of M Core, will work closely with the remaining occupiers currently within the market space to provide relocation opportunities in more commercially viable areas of the town. We look forward to bringing you further announcements in the near future.”
Mr Martyn said: “They put that statement in the planning permission because one of the objections was every business in here was going to be displaced, but what hasn’t happened is no one has actually held them accountable for that.
“The planning has now been approved, so now that it’s been approved, they don’t see any reason to actually follow through with what they said they were going to do.
“So they’ve just gone ahead and evicted us. We’ve got nowhere to go, there is no offer of anywhere to go. Several traders have actually offered to buy their own external units and just be given a plot in the town centre and they’ve still been told ‘no’ so we’ve got nothing.”
Tenants must vacate the Marketplace by 28 June 2025.
‘Nothing’s going on’
He said they’d heard “for months” about rumours of the planning application but were “consistently told, ‘nothing’s going on’.”
He added: “A multi-million-pound development like this must’ve been talked about for months, if not years, because think of the process they have to go through for that level of development.”
He has decided to move his business out of the town saying: “On the 10th of June I’m opening in Pontypool Market. There’s nothing here for me in Cwmbran. Unfortunately, it’s meant I’m going to lose quite a lot of my customer base here. I’m trying to combat that by offering a delivery service, which I’m looking into, to cover the Cwmbran area. Cwmbran town centre have left me with no choice.”
Cwmbran Life contacted LCP Properties on 15 May for a comment, but has still not received one. I asked them to tell me how they were supporting traders to move to new units in the town.
Their statement will be published as a response once it’s received.