ABERGAVENNY Chamber of Trade recently held a meeting to examine the new design for the redevelopment of the cattle market.

The chamber felt they should make it clear to the public that they had always supported the redevelopment of the cattle market that utilised the use of a large food store.

However they were concerned that MCC's chosen design had a large area of non-food retail which could effect trade in the town.

"The original requirements, agreed by Monmouthshire County Council and the various groups, had one retail unit but this has grown under this new design," said member David Haswell.

"If you have more than one retail unit you are beginning to resemble a retail park and this has added to theamount of floor space given to selling non-food retail items.

"It will obviously effect trade in the town and Councillor Greenland conceded that this will not be not helpful in encouraging people into the town.

"There is also the visual impact of the car parking to consider which once again makes it look like a retail park.

"The library is on one level when most libraries are designed to be built on a single level to allow for overall supervision of the building.

"It also continues a recent fad in architecture for sustainability and you can see the design has a wood and timber facade."

The meeting also had a guest speaker in the form of former civil engineer John Grant who talked about the traffic issues concerning the design.

"The developers have done a quick dirty traffic assessment and the £4,000 they used for the assessment really didn't go anywhere," he said.

"The Welsh Assembly Government advice as to regards of traffic is to change the scale or type of development in order to prevent traffic problems.

"There are databases open to engineers so they can establish traffic situations and assume traffic patterns.

"It takes into consideration the size of development and the type of goods that are sold - so for example a foodstore would generate different traffic to a B&Q store."

Chamber of Trade member, David Haswell, also criticised the standard of the research into traffic.

"The traffic assessment carried out by Monmouthshire County Council is not a full one - it is a partial assessment," he said.

"We have been told that a full traffic assessment would cost upwards of £100,000, however I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle and it must be undertaken."

The Chamber of Trade members also looked at MCC's rejected plans including options three and four that the public did not see.

Mr Haswell argued these designs, although far from perfect, were better designs than MCC's preferred choices of option one and option two.

"Monmouthshire County Council never showed us options three and four despite Councillor Bob Greenland promising all the designs would be put on their website," continued Mr Haswell.

"The rejected option four design is by the only architect who accepted the council's invitation to enter the design competition.

"Their design sets the ASDA store back to prevent a mis-scale with the buildings on Lion Street.

"It contains simple elements and it is an interesting bit of town planning - it has also reduced the amount of car parking on the surface which prevents the look of a retail park."

The Abergavenny Development Forum marked the four designs out of 10 on a series of criteria.

The criteria included requirements such as the amount of food space, the retention of the abattoir and access for vehicles.

The option four design came out on top with 46 out of 100 and the MCC chosen design doing comparatively poorly with 27.

"I think the option four suffered because they dared to challenge the council's design brief - but for me it is the best layout," added David Haswell.

"Monmouthshire County Council had set such a difficult design brief that I don't think any architect was ever likely to come up with a great design.

"By breaking that design brief, by setting the ASDA store back from Lion Street, the option four architect has actually created a better layout."

The Chamber of Trade are now in talks how best to move forward with their concerns over the amount of space that has been given to selling non-food items.