Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay (TLSB) has submitted a planning application to Swansea Council to develop an international watersport centre in the area.

The facility will be developed at the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon site, a renewable energy-generating lagoon with a 320MW installed capacity.

The centre will provide an 'outdoors' focussed centre of excellence for both recreational and competitive sporting facilities, complete with boat storage, welfare areas and orientation facilities supporting the visitor centre out on the seawall. It will also house operations, maintenance and research facilities supporting TLSB's commitments to monitor and mitigate the lagoon's environmental impacts throughout its 120-year life; this includes the development of a lobster and oyster hatchery. The hatchery will house a fully serviced aquaculture facility with a seawater circulation system of tanks and hives, enhanced by a glass envelope to generate greenhouse conditions for optimised algae growth. The greenhouse structure will harness solar power, generating a clean, low-energy, nutrient supply to the hatchery.

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Alex Herbert, Head of Planning, Tidal Lagoon Power, said: "The application includes the public realm and other facilities at the western landfall of the recently-consented lagoon. It is identical to the excluded facilities and demonstrates our commitment to providing all the benefits of the scheme as originally consulted upon.

"The lagoon is an ideal place to host watersports, so we need the onshore facilities to support them. The watersport centre will be capable of hosting local, national and international events and we hope will encourage people to participate in sport using the facilities provided. We have given attention to disabled watersports facilities ensuring access and safe training for everyone.

"The building is also the obvious place to house our research and monitoring facilities, supporting the commitments we made following the lagoon's environmental impact assessment."

Mike Hall, of architects Faulkner Brown, added that the project is a "unique opportunity to use renewable energy generation infrastructure creatively to secure social benefits for local people."

(LM/JP)