Oswestry21

We now understand that Shropshire Council have asked that all four applications be called in, that is - heard together by a planning inspector, probably at a public inquiry. Schedule and dates to be announced.

A full hall and an emotionally charged audience of 250 at the Marches School in Oswestry, today (Thurs 29^th) witnessed the Shropshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee, reject the application for a new superstore and cinema on the town’s Central Car Park.

Although the Council’s own Planning  Officers had recommended that J.Ross’ bid be accepted, as the only ‘ in centre’  application,  committee members expressed serious concerns about the plan’s  design, the adverse effect on the local residents, and above all, the traffic implications including volume, congestion and safety. They voted by a majority of 8 to 2 in favour of rejection.

However, it had taken three hours, including a procedural adjournment, to arrive at this decision, and Chairman John Everall then took Council officers’  advice to defer until ‘the autumn’ consideration of the 3 remaining bids all of which are ‘out of centre’…….

The early dawns, summer’s fleeting arrival, the scent of bluebells and lilac in the air may all help to remind us that this year’s long winter may be over.  In the distance the drums of the developers can still be heard by those who listen for them.  A flurry of activity over the past two weeks from the four developers is our signal that life returns to the campaign.  So what the News Desk asked itself last night was, does OS21 make a difference?

Reading through pages of new submissions you will not see reference to OS21 but you will, if you have as we have, become students of the planning process see the effects OS21 has had on the debate.

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D day tomorrow. Decision or Deferral? After two years of debate since the Town Council/OCA Smithfield shambles first came to light, during which Oswestry has become encircled by Tesco in every neighbouring town,  the Strategic Planning Committee meets at the Lion Quays tomorrow afternoon to decide whether Oswestry is to become another clone town/ghost town and become one of the last to clamber aboard the sinking ship of supermarket over-provision, or whether it can have some self belief in its own economy and community and offer the rare opportunity to inhabitants and visitors alike to experience what it is to be a market town.

All the current applications were visualised in a very different economic climate to that which we are now experiencing. All are based on a need argument set out by Nathaniel Lichfield Partners which have been steadily and incrementally reduced since 2007 to a shadow of their initial findings. Petrol costs are rising, food miles and local food issues are now common components of newspaper articles and news items. And realisation that true leakage is the leakage from the local economy created by supermarkets is now common knowledge.

All the applications facing the Strategic Planning Committee are either far too large or too far out of town, or both. All will affect the town, independent traders, the community, and drain the local economy. Until real need in the form of sensible creation of employment land for real long term and decently paid jobs and the subsequent building of housing in the locality is in place, there is no need for further supermarket presence in a small market town that already has Sainsburys, ALDI, Morrisons, M & S; S, Iceland, and the various other outlets that provide food retail that have opened recently.

Here’s to a sane and pragmatic decision to either refuse all four applications or to defer a decision until such time as scale is appropriate to need. The desperation evidenced by developers in recent days says far more about their need to make the bucks than it does about any consideration for the town’s need to continue as an economic community.

Twist or bust.

Interesting news coming in of a new phone survey being carried out in Oswestry. Very specific about the current situation - do you think Oswestry needs a new supermarket - do we need a cinema - do we need more restaurants -  do we need a bigger choice of food - would the town benefit from a cinema - if so, would it be better as a 5-screen, or single screen? - of the sites, which do you prefer - do you think a central car park site would cause more traffic congestion.

If you take such a call, perhaps you would like to get in touch at the contact on the tab above. Desperate measures as the 18th March looms!

The following post is the content of an e mail from Trinity Residents Association expressing their concerns about the Central Car Park scheme. It represents their views and has been uploaded unedited, but with discussion with Trinity representative Peter Lloyd. OS21 considers that this website should be an open forum on all issues, whether supermarket orientated or otherwise, and relevant contributions are welcome, though they may not represent the views of The Editor or OS21 as a whole. There are important decisions facing Oswestry, and without debate and dialogue they will be made without even a semblance of public opinion being taken into account.

In the four-cornered battle over which supermarket development will get the go-ahead, it has suited J Ross to allow those of us who would normally oppose such a large store to accept the principle of a town centre scheme before its detail was open to scrutiny.

Now it is available, the detail of their proposal reveals a scheme potentially every bit as threatening to the town centre as the other three.

We have been struggling for ten days to understand its complexities, and we aren’t there yet. We are holding back on more technical observations about their traffic analysis, until we have discussed them in more detail with a highways expert. But the clock is ticking, and there are only two weeks left before the deadline (14 October) for comments and objections.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take an expert to see some worrying flaws in J Ross’s transport assessment.

It is important to bear in mind how enormous the scheme is. It is the biggest of the four contenders. If we ignore the extra handling space needed because the structure is on two floors, its gross size is still about 50% bigger than Sainsburys, and 100% bigger that than Morrisons. The revised Nat haniel Lichfield figures (August 2009) for gross retail floorspace need in 2016 is 2000 square metres. The gross floor area for J Ross’s scheme is 6127 square metres.

The store ‘ s sales area - the greater part of the pink zone on the right hand plan on page 29 of the Design and Access Statement - fills a good half of the current car park, plus space presently occupied by buildings (to be demolished) behind the Smithfield hotel and the Bull Ring, and rear gardens in Salop Road.

Because the proposed store is very large, and sited in a network of narrow streets, the developer must demonstrate that a project of that scale is practical. In particular, he must give accurate figures for traffic volumes, flows round junctions, and car park use, showing that the road system can handle his scheme without unacceptable congestion.

The figures J Ross supplies for these purposes essentially rest on one traffic survey taken over two days, Saturday 7 February and Wednesday 11 February 2009. At that time, the county experienced snowfall and freezing conditionss. There was a national shortage of grit and salt. Shropshire council was concentrating on struggling to keep ’A’ and ‘B’ roads passable. Figures we have obtained show that ticket sales on the central car park – where February is always one of the two quietest months anyway – were significantly down on the annual daily average on the days the survey was taken.

Basic survey practice is to choose a survey day which closely resembles the norm – not one of the least typical of the year Yet J Ross relies on unrepresentative days as the basis of their predictions about the traffic impact of the store, once it is in place. There is no sign of their figures being adjusted for the anomalous nature of their survey days. This failure to provide sound data means we have no reliable estimate of the traffic impact of their scheme – other than their optimistic one. All we know is that traffic will be greater than they claim.

Their predictions about car parking, too, are worrying. A new supermarket of this size generally needs about 400 new parking spaces, just for itself. They propose an extra 213, most on a separate site, and no extra provision for the cinema. Even with a new car park in Middleton Road , there will not be enough parking capacity for the extra vehicle trips generated by the new store. By J Ross’s own admission, there will be, on Wednesdays, many more vehicles seeking spaces in the new long-term car park than can be accommodated. At the peak, 242 cars will be chasing 163 parking spaces. Where will these extra vehicles go? Will they be “dispersed around the remaining car parks in Oswestry town centre” as J Ross suggests? Or will they churn round the town centre, waiting for a free space, adding to congestion?

We cannot, on the data supplied by J Ross, have confidence that the road infrastructure will support a scheme of the scale they propose without subjecting the town centre to long-term traffic congestion. This would be as great a threat to a thriving town centre and to trade as an edge-of-town store.

Look at the proposals for yourself online at

http://planning2.shropshire.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/DcApplication/application_detailview.aspx?caseno=KO84SQTDF0000

There are 14 days left to comment on the scheme.

Well, while the Statutory Regulatory Committee deliberate, it all has the sense of the lull before the storm. Some news to report:

J Ross have finally got their statutory assessments, including traffic, in their application -

http://planning1.shropshire.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appType=planning&appNumber=09/02082/FUL  More to come in due course.

With regard to the Smithfield -

http://planning1.shropshire.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appType=planning&appNumber=OS/08/15788/OUT  

The green grocer in Ellesmere is already deciding to close following the opening of Tesco there. Tenants of shop units at the Smithfield were, apparently, given notice to quit in July/August.

Burbidges -

http://planning1.shropshire.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appType=planning&appNumber=OS/09/15869/OUT  

have bought Canal Wood Industrial Estate, adjacent to their Chirk premises “because of the rental income it produces”.

J T Hughes and Guttercrest -

http://planning1.shropshire.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appType=planning&appNumber=OS/09/15868/OUT characteristically quiet and awaiting, like the rest of us, the deliberation of the Strategic Regulatory Committee.

The (again) downwardly revised Nathaniel Lichfield figures for current retail need in Oswestry stand at around 20,000 sq, ft. gross. These figures have been revised partly due to the economic climate, and additionally with regard to the new retail outlets in Wrexham, Ruabon, Welshpool and Ellesmere locally, and Morrisons, M & S and new budget shops retailing food and comparison goods in Oswestry. The four current applications are between approx. 45,000 sq. ft. and 70,000 sq. ft.

Meanwhile life in town goes on as normal - rowdy scenes in the council chamber at a public meeting about the Middleton Road traffic lights. The fact that there have been no injury accidents in the last 5 years, and 6 in the previous 5 years (no more than if there had been traffic lights according to Martin Allard, Head of Strategic Highways and Traffic, Shropshire Council), did not avert apoplexy from certain councillors vowing to find Town Council funding for the seemingly unnecessary traffic lights before a review of town traffic flow as a result of any of the current supermarket applications being granted permission.

And murmurings of speculation about the Powis Hall market makeover coming to nought as a result of lack of clarification as to who’s task it is to seek additional funding, and what seems to be a lack of alacrity and initiative to seize the opportunity that was presented.

So, signing off for the moment. Usual fiver in a brown envelope handed over in the bandstand in Cae Glas to anyone with any relevant news or information. No names, no pack drill.

Don’t forget the Jo Lo Co in the Memorial Hall on Tuesday.