COUNTY FLATS: The Aberavon beachfront is getting 135 new flats and its tallest building yet

One hundred and thirty-five new flats are to be built on the Aberavon seafront, all of them let at social rent.

They go on the County Flats, the three big blocks standing between the beach and Bevin Avenue in Sandfields, put up by the council in the late 1950s and early 60s and a familiar sight from the sand ever since.

Next door is Awel Afan, the Persimmon estate built on the site of the former Afan Lido leisure centre, where the last homes were handed over in late 2025. The County Flats work runs along its western edge, so the two schemes together remake most of that corner of the seafront.

The biggest of the new buildings rises six storeys facing the promenade, taller than anything else on that stretch, with a green-clad corner meant to catch the eye from the beach.

To make room for it, the block nearest the sea comes down. Carmarthen House goes completely, along with two houses next door at 1 and 2 Afan Lido Villas.

The new flats are mostly one-bedroom, 78 of them, with 43 two-bedroom and four three-bedroom. Ten more one-bedroom flats go in three small walk-up blocks at the top of the site near Moorland Road.

The first phase of the rebuild is already finished and standing on the estate, brick at the bottom, grey cladding above, a corner tower five storeys high. The new blocks are meant to follow the same look.

The other two blocks, Cardigan House and Coronation House, are staying, and the 38 flats inside them get wrapped in insulation with new windows and doors, which should cut what residents pay to heat them.

Gas disappears from the estate altogether. Every boiler comes out, replaced by air source heat pumps that take warmth from the outside air, with direct electric heating in the upper flats.

Parking is where residents may push back. There are 82 spaces planned for the whole estate, and Tai Tarian‘s own survey lists not having enough parking for the people already living there as one of the site’s weaknesses.

Tai Tarian is the housing association that took on Neath Port Talbot’s council homes, and it has been working through the estate in phases since 2021.

The plans have grown since they first went out for comment in December, when only the southern wing of Carmarthen House was coming down. Taking the whole block frees up space for 22 more homes.

Tai Tarian’s paperwork totals the finished estate two different ways, as 173 homes in one place and 176 in another.

There is a limit to how far the insulation work can go, and the association’s consultants say so plainly. The blocks are built from a rough, gravelly concrete called no-fines, and the structure and foundations underneath cannot take much more without heavy underpinning.

New social housing in Wales is meant to reach an EPC A rating. Once insulated, the worst of the existing flats reach C78 and the best get to B91. The new-build flats take a different route the Welsh Government allows, hitting a low-energy standard instead of the top rating.

The consultants are unsparing about what is there now, calling the blocks deteriorated and unsympathetic features of the seafront, and describing them as functional but lacking architectural distinction.

Work on the estate began with a £13m scheme announced in 2021, which built 55 homes and modernised 72 more, and saw existing residents moved to other Tai Tarian properties while the work went on.

Anyone who wants a say has until Monday 21 September. Comments go to Asbri Planning, the consultants running the consultation from their Swansea office, and the application then goes to Neath Port Talbot Council for a decision.