A RETROSPECTIVE application to legalise the manufacture of fish feed in 60-year-old sheds behind homes in Llandovery has been approved after a site meeting by county planners.

Councillors heard that although scores of residents in and around Towy Avenue had objected, no complaints had been received during the 12 months the business had been operating.

The development, for Ms Olwen Hardwick, of Voda Feeds Ltd, Keepers House, Llyn y Fran Hatchery, Llanddeusant, near Llangadog, was approved at the Buffer Depot, a former government storage unit built in the 1940s.

Ms Hardwick is a partner in Wales’ largest privatelyowned fish hatchery, which supplies Atlantic salmon and sea trout to enhance stocks on the rivers Towy and Cleddau.

Residents claimed the development could have implications for pollution and health problems, with flies, vermin, rats and cockroaches.

But planning officer Kevin Phillips said: “While retrospective applications are not advocated, the site has been operating for about a year.

“There have been no complaints to the county council on the operation of the business in terms of its effects on local living conditions.”