Former Council Offices

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These twin concrete buildings originally housed the HQ Offices of the all too short lived Gwent County Council between 1974 when the 'new - super counties' were introduced by the Local Government Act 1972 and 1996 when they were replaced by the current unitary authorities system instead.

After 1996 the buildings served mainly as the HQ offices for the new Monmouthshire County Council, despite the fact that Cwmbran and these offices are located in the neighbouring County Borough of Torfaen instead , whose county borough council, however, also maintained some offices in the remainder of the buildings, although the Torfaen Council HQ itself has always been located in near-by Pontypool's Civic Centre.

In the winter of 2011 an architectural engineering report sought by the Authority on the state of the buildings determined that they both suffered from chronic and irreparable 'concrete cancer'. Monmouthshire C.C. opted to sell off the buildings and move into a new purpose built centre in Magor, located just inside the County boundaries. The site was originally valued in 2008 at approx. £4m.

However, as a result of plummeting land prices and demand that estimate quickly fell to just £950K in October 2012, when it was then further discovered that the Authority would be legally liable for the cost of filling the void space under the site occupied by the former County Civil Defence Nuclear fall-out Shelter, at an estimated cost of approx £675k, further reducing the value of the site now to just £225K.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-19984885
www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/9960007.Nuclear_bunker_u...