AN ABERGAVENNY charitable trust is on course to take over a former primary school next week.

The campaign group Abergavenny Community Trust Ltd plans to turn Park Street Primary into a community hub after Monmouthshire council carried out £56,000 of essential repairs to the building on Park Street.

The building, which has been empty since 2006, needed repairs that included the removal of asbestos, a new fire alarm and emergency lighting, before it could be leased.

Abergavenny Community Centre Ltd has been in negotiations with the county council – which owns the site – for sometime, after plans to sell it for £300,000, were shelved in 2011.

The building is now safe to handover to the group to secure a 25-year lease to use the site as a centre for teaching as well as being a social hub and place to hold activities such as a crèche, drop-in café, luncheon club for pensioners, workshops and support for young people and parents.

The trust is hoping to complete the contracts after January 20 before the building is handed over to it.

Chris Aldous, one of three directors of ACT, said after several years of being vacant the building is in need of breathing new life into its fabric.

He said: “Apart from the odd cracked window, a bit of graffiti and lifting paint, it’s difficult to believe the building closed in 2006. The biggest challenge that we face in the short term will be to the area of uneven, hard-standing which was exposed in 2012 after the demountable classrooms were removed.”

Fellow director, Marion Pearse added that over the coming months they hope that volunteers and supporters will help re-decorate and carry out general maintenance work.

She said: “We welcome and encourage people to get in touch via our website at abergavenny-community-trust.org.uk”

A council spokesman has said the lease has been finalised.