Plans submitted for outdoor sauna at Tenby's North Beach

Plans for an outdoor sauna alongside Tenby’s North Beach have been submitted to the National Park.

In an application to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, Tenby-based David Jones, seeks permission for the siting of a mobile sauna unit on a raised concrete hard-standing area above the breakwater wall and slipway at the far north end corner of North Beach.

It would be situated below the Park Hotel, North Cliff, the site in private ownership as part of the Park Hotel estate.

A supporting statement accompanying the application says the site has most recently been used as the base for a paddleboard tour and rental business, and has also been utilised to store watercraft and recreational beach equipment.

Of the scheme itself, it says: “We aim to provide a close to nature sauna experience and in so doing make sauna culture’s physical, mental, and social health benefits accessible to the local community and its visiting guests.

“We aim to operate a year-round service that offers an immersive and nuanced experience that only nature and the changing seasons can provide. We aim to provide a sauna service set within a natural setting with direct access for sea bathing as an integral part of the sauna experience. We aim to provide an experience with a low environmental impact and high physical, mental and social gains.”

It adds: “The sauna and changing room will be separate mobile units. This provides practical advantages for siting and maintenance but also as a design strategy to provide a sense of impermanence, transience and movement sympathetic to its natural setting and unique location.

“The sauna unit will feature a wood fired sauna stove, a large glazed picture window and low level LED internal mood lighting reinforcing design principles based on creating low environmental impact and an atmosphere that reaches for a sense of the elemental.

“Externally both units will feature black metal profile roofing, black timber cladding and double glazed windows. A glazed picture window to the east elevation of the sauna unit will take in the impressive town and sea vista.”

The application will be considered by Park planners at a later date.

Recently, a previously temporary grant of an outdoor sauna at Saundersfoot’s harbour was refused a permanent location by Park planners.

Back in June 2024, a temporary two-year permission for a mobile wood-fired sauna at overlooking the sea at Saundersfoot harbour was granted by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park’s development management committee.

Since then, a further application by Kerry Evans of Hwyl Outdoor Sauna to make the siting permanent was submitted to national park planners, which was refused following an officer recommendation at the July committee meeting.

While planners expressed their regret at the refusal of that scheme, one of the issues based on location, they hoped a compromise may be reached with another location in the harbour area.

Kerry Evans has previously stated she is considering appealing the decision on that scheme, which had gained huge local support as well as an online appeal calling for the refusal to be overturned, to Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW).

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