A former community hospital could be brought back into use as an office and warehouse after being empty for seven years.

Blaenavon Hospital in Church Road closed in 2014, but now a parcel courier business has been given the go ahead for a change of use by Torfaen Council planners.

The hospital was built on the western side of Church Road in 1985, but the beds were closed to in-patients in 2010 followed by primary care services transferring to the new Blaenavon Resource Centre on Middle Coed Cae Road in 2014.

A council planning report said: “The submitted application indicates that the existing office building is to be used to provide packing, storage and distribution space for an online parcel courier business, along with ancillary office space, and which began operating from the site during the pandemic when online sales increased.”

The planning application said that the long-term plans were to develop the land with affordable housing, with the site allocated for 17 houses in Torfaen Council’s Local Development Plan.

But councillors have been told that to date no applications have come forward for housing there.

The winding down of the hospital by the Aneurin Bevan Health Board a decade ago left councillors furious.

Blaenavon’s then town mayor Janet Jones called the removal of its nine beds in 2010 “a fait accompli” geared towards closure.

The hospital mainly served people recovering from illness or trauma, and also had a minor A&E ward,.

Health officials at the time said the service had to modernise to develop healthcare that was “fit for the future”.

A spokesman said the board understood the depth of feeling but the changes were essential, with its two new hospitals at Ystrad Mynach and Ebbw Vale, plus enhanced community services, able to delivers care in, and much closer to, patients’ homes.