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Wales Online
National
Matt Discombe

These are all the buildings Cardiff council will sell as it faces £250m repair bill

The buildings which Cardiff council will look sell this year have been revealed as the authority faces a £250m maintenance backlog on its properties.

Cardiff council hopes to raise £40m by 2023 by selling land and property, which would go towards refurbishing or rebuilding schools and other building projects.

The council has now announced which properties it's going to look to sell in 2019-20. They include the former Rumney High School for commercial development, the Waungron tip for a housing development and the former Llanrumney Play Centre, which would be redeveloped.

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The council also intends to lease out the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay and the New Theatre to commercial tenants this year.

New Theatre, Cardiff (Western Mail Archive)

It also wants to lease out community facilities such as the former Roath Library, Trelai Bowls Pavilion and the Mynachdy Institute.

The former Llanrumney High School, the Michaelston College site in Ely, the former STAR Leisure Centre in Splott, and the former St Mellon's Enterprise Centre in Towbridge are also expected to be turned into housing developments. 

The council also plans to sell 14 of its 21 retail parades.

Cardiff council's cabinet, which has approved the plan, heard at a meeting on May 16 that many of the retail parades are in a poor condition and need significant investment. 

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Councillor Russell Goodway, cabinet member for investment and development, told the meeting: "We're in a situation where we own a significant number of retail parades which are in a rundown condition. We don't have the resources to bring them into a condition we would expect to see in those communities.

"Reluctantly we have decided those 14 retail parades are beyond the ability of the council to manage in the foreseeable future."

Cllr Goodway told the meeting the council aims to attract investment in the parades to make them more attractive.

The retail parades to be sold are Bishopston Road and Heol Trenewydd in Caerau, Grand Avenue and Wilson Road in Ely, Pwllmelin Road, Chestnut Road and Plasmawr Road in Fairwater, Gabalfa Avenue numbers 49 to 59 and 85 to 93 in Llandaff North, Llangranog Road and Fishguard Road in Llanishen, Burnham Avenue in Llanrumney and Cae Glas and Harris Avenue in Rumney.

The council owns about £1.2bn worth of property and land in its estate, which costs £37m a year to run.

The council faces a total maintenance backlog in its properties of £250m, according to a council report. That includes more than 1,500 buildings and 10,000 acres of land used for council operations and hundreds of properties let to third parties.

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