THE owner of a Georgian high street building, where the ground-floor Cardzone shop has to use buckets to catch rain falling through the ceiling, has applied for listed building consent for renovation works.

Work has already been undertaken on upgrading the three upstairs floors at 13, High Street, Chepstow, with the plans themselves retrospectivally approved last summer.

But the building was listed in the 1970s as a part of the historic street scene just 50 yards from the town’s historic gate and wall, is in the town’s Archaeologically Sensitive Area, and listed building consent is still needed.

The owner, WTM Pension Scheme, says the building required significant renovation upstairs to make it habitable, with “the shop having buckets to collect the rainwater that came into the shop from above”.

A report to Monmouthshire planners said the upper floors “had been neglected for many years”.

Vegetation was found inside, and water had caused “significant deterioration of wall finishes, along with timber decay, mold and fungi growth”.

“Without the building works being undertaken, including a significant amount of structural strengthening, the building would have deteriorated further and potentially become unsafe,” it added.

The scheme also includes the creation of an internal courtyard space and replacement windows.

The Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust has raised no objection, but said work had taken place “without planning consent or archaeological mitigation”, and it was “possible” that the inside of the building had “been damaged or destroyed without record”.