THE future of a dilapidated 181-year-old town centre Baptist chapel is in doubt after planners rejected a bid to save it by part-converting it into flats and homes.

Lydney Baptist Chapel minister Rev Alison Griffiths said worshippers were “extremely disappointed” by the Forest council’s decision, and owing to the building’s condition, services would be held elsewhere from January after nearly two centuries of worship at the high street site.

Developers B&R Developments will be appealing to try and have the plan reinstated, but if that fails the chapel will be put up for sale and the congregation will not return to the Grade II-listed building.

Rev Griffiths said: “Lydney Baptist Church wanted to continue its work in the community by developing its historic site to provide central and affordable housing, as well as creating a welcoming meeting area for church and community activities.

“So we are extremely disappointed at the stance taken by the local planning officer, conservation officers and district councillors at the planning meeting on November 14.

“There appeared to be no understanding of our position, a complete unwillingness to engage with the financial realities placed on small groups

of volunteers faced

with maintaining historic buildings, and a disturbing lack of commercial awareness that hampered their ability to deal adequately with the proposed development.

“The decision of the district councillors represents a missed opportunity for the community in Lydney.”

The history and theology graduate added: “Thankfully, the church is not the building and it doesn’t define us as a church where we meet to worship on a Sunday.

“The Victoria Centre on Victoria Street in Lydney has kindly offered us the use of their building, so from Sunday, January 14, that is where the church will be meeting on Sunday mornings for the foreseeable future.

“The final service in the old chapel building will be on Sunday, January 7, when the Methodists and the United Reformed Church will be joining us to celebrate the start of a new season for the Lydney Baptists as we say farewell to the old chapel and move on.”

But Rev Griffiths said B&R Developments director Joe Rice “hates to see historic buildings go to waste and be lost forever to the local community,” and he would challenge the decision of the planning committee.

“We are very grateful to the local community in Lydney and in the Forest of Dean which has supported and encouraged us in many ways over the past few years and would like to assure them that this is not the end of the story regarding the old chapel,” she added.

“If successful, the church will move back into the chapel when it’s been redeveloped, but if not, the church will have no choice but to put the building on the market”.

Leaving the chapel, which needs at least £600,000 to be spent on it, will be an emotional wrench for worshippers, many of them pensioners who have attended services there since they were children.

But the Baptist Church says the Grade II-listed building would cost ten times its current value to renovate as a place of worship, and anything less than three apartments on the chapel’s upper floors and four new houses replacing the hall and reading room behind would make the mixed-use scheme unviable.

Planning officer Tony Pope told councillors last week that the updated plan did not “achieve the wholesale rethinking of the proposal” required.

“Fundamentally, the scheme still involves the substantial demolition of a listed building and significant and unsympathetic changes to the retained portion of the chapel,” he said.

A conservation report added that it would cause “substantial harm... to the special character of the listed building,” and the plan was “overdevelopment” with “insufficient” parking and garden space, affecting air quality.

Lydney town council had backed the plan as a means of saving the building, opposite the town’s Tesco store, if parking concerns were met.

The chapel’s heating system needs a complete overhaul, the balcony is closed owing to plaster falling on to pews, it has difficult access and dilapidated windows and flooring, and worshippers are moving out as it is unfit for purpose.

Rev Griffiths previously told the Review the “once beautiful building” had “sadly deteriorated... as cold and damp took a firm hold decades ago.

“We are also embarrassed by the state of the building outside and acutely aware that it adversely affects the neighbouring residential and commercial properties… Once a distinctive presence on the High Street, it has long been known as a local eyesore.”