Planners reveal Oswestry supermarket site choice
Thursday 22nd July 2010, 3:07PM BST.
Planning officials today made their long-awaited recommendations for Oswestry’s multi-million pound supermarket.
In a 52-page report Shropshire Council planning officers said the store should be built on the Central Car Park – despite fears the site will not be available until at least 2016.
They yesterday published their report into which one of four rival bids should win Oswestry’s Store Wars.
Officers will recommend to councillors at a crunch planning meeting next Thursday that J Ross Developments’ bid to build the store on the car park should get the go-ahead as long as their conditions are met.
Rival bids to build on timber firm Richard Burbidge Ltd’s Whittington Road site, on the Shrewsbury Road Smithfield livestock site and on land at Victoria Road currently used by car firm JT Hughes and guttering firm Guttercrest should be refused permission, the report said.
The report said there is doubt whether the Central Car Park will be available for development but said that did not rule the scheme out.
The report also said campaigners had contacted the council with concerns and many of those were taken into account.
Responding to the new report’s findings, Simon Hoare, planning consultant for the Smithfield application, said: “It seems perverse that the council is asking councillors to support an application on a site which in the view of legal opinion is not available.”
Peter Vernon, planning consultant for the Burbidge plans, said: “We continue to be frustrated by the length of time that the decision has taken.”
Les Stephan, planning consultant for the Victoria Road plans, said: “We have reduced the size of our store after speaking to planning officers and we still feel it is the best option for Oswestry.”
Nobody was available for comment from J Ross Developments.
The new report will be considered by Shropshire Council’s strategic planning committee meeting at The Marches School.
By Sue Austin
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You are having a giraffe! Where are the visitors to the town going to park whilst this monstrosity is being built.. talk about kill the town for good! You only have to look at the traffic chaos at the moment, with Victoria road closed, to see what devastation the proposed traffic scheme will bring – beggars belief!
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Even if the Central site were granted planning permission; they have a 3-year time limit to commence development. Meaning the application will have to be renewed at LEAST once, maybe twice, before anything could commence in 2016. The Town Council have made it quite clear, as have the Council’s legal advisors, that the Central site is NOT available and could be challenged easily at appeal! – it just sounds like a delaying tactic to me! A very expensive delaying tactic!
The Hughes site is more in-line with the recent figures put forward and is connected to the town centre through its linkages with the Penda Retail Park – people already park there and walk into town anyway! Plus, they’re offering highway/gateway improvements that the Council simply cannot fund themselves – especially since their recent cuts!
I understand the concerns with regard to supermarkets in market towns but unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the views of the younger generation. As a lady in her mid 20′s, I personally have no desire to go to Oswestry shopping – the locally run shops and butchers etc are just too expensive for me to afford on a weekly basis! The same goes for personal shopping in Oswestry – young people are looking for Selfridges, Primarks etc (cheaper but fashionable clothing) and Oswestry just doesn’t cater for the younger generation very well in this respect. If anything, the CCP site should be home to a small department store in my opinion.
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The idea is probably to protect the town centre by building close to it, rather than away on the edge of the town.
Ironically then it would seem a move best destined to kill what it seeks to protect.
Hopefully I am right in thinking that Oswestry Town Council own the main carpark and will scupper this plan by refusing to sell up.
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The current members of the Town Council – which owns the central car park on trust for the people of Oswestry – would not sell the car park. They have said time and again that it is not for sale and a number of (expensive) legal opinions have said that it is not a site that can be developed.
Seems perverse of the Council to recommend a site they know cannot be developed without a change of mind or change of council!
Maybe they WANT the applicants to go straight to Appeal and take the whole matter out of their hands?
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if this is the best our highly paid planning officers can do after 4 years then the sooner the government cuts are enacted the better for everyone
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the JT Hughes site does NOT have a cinema – do you really want to support that ?
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I couldn’t agree more with Oswestry Resident. The people in charge of this decision have picked the most ludicrous site out of the four possible choices. How is building another supermarket smack bang in the centre of town going to help small businesses? Who exactly is going to shop at the smaller local butchers when they can buy everything in the massive branch of Tesco on their doorstep, at a reduced price? And where exactly are non-residents meant to park even if they did want to use smaller shops? How is the CCP big enough to house a supermarket AND the necessary car parking?
This stupid, idiotic decision (if it goes ahead, and hopefully it won’t) will be death of many small businesses, and will result in yet more sad, empty, abandoned looking shops on our high street.
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There is no need for any further superstore development in Oswestry either on the car park or any of the other site. Yes, we would like to have a cinema but do we want to sacrifice the rest of the town for it? Let’s have a cinema within the town so people can walk to it, then walk to the pub, then walk home.
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Oswestry’s centre is so congrested sometimes, to build another supermarket on the town car park would make the congestion even worse. Far from protecting the town centre , to build a supermarket in the centre would destroy it, the traffic would choke the town and make people want to avoid it.
I think the Burbidge site with a large cinema so near to the town centre would have been the best option. The pulling power of a heritage railway , a Town Green, Shelf bank as a Nature reserve and a large cinema so near to the twon centre would have made Oswestry a destination or stopping point for families.
I hope that the Burbidges scheme is given the go ahead.
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