New cafe and seating area approved as part of city park regeneration

Plans for a new cafe in Newport’s Tredegar Park have won the approval of city council planners.

Tredegar Park Lodge, which faces onto the A48 and sits just west of the park’s main entrance, can now be converted into a cafe, offices, and outdoor seating area.

Newport City Council is behind the project, which forms part of wider plans to regenerate the park it bought outright in 2024.

It has also reopened a splash pad in the park, and has separately applied for planning permission for a new multi-use games area to complement the wider sports and recreation offer on-site.

The plans for a new cafe at the lodge have been welcomed by Gaer ward councillor Bev Perkins, who said it would represent “the best use of this building if it was not going to be used as a residence”.

“A coffee/tea shop with indoor seating for those colder, wetter days and outside seating in the spring and summer months – I hope that the current operators of the catering concession in Tredegar Park would be offered the chance to operate from the lodge,” added Cllr Perkins in her comments to the planning department.

In a report, council planning officers said the proposals would “formalise an existing operation near the site that is currently offered by a moveable structure”

They described the lodge, in its current state, as “overgrown and derelict”, and judged it “adversely impacts the wider setting”.

The cafe project would “bring the site back into beneficial use, to the betterment of the immediate site and wider area”, the officers added.

The planning application also drew support from some members of the public.

One said the proposed redevelopment was “great news for Newport” and described the building as an “eyesore”, but requested that two gate-post decorations be restored as part of the project.

Another member of the public said they supported the proposal to bring the lodge “back into beneficial use” but raised concerns about parking and the volume of traffic at Tredegar Park.

A third described the lodge as being “out of use for many years and at high risk of vandalism”.

“I support bringing this building back into use”, they said, but claimed bees are nesting at the property, and hoped their removal “will be done in a humane way”.