Don't build a supermarket in city centre

A LEADING city councillor is opposing plans for a new supermarket, road and retail units in the centre of Lancaster.

Coun Ian Barker is urging the city council stick to its Local Plan in dealing with proposals from CR Chelverton for a new relief road and massive retail development on Kingsway and between Moor Lane, Alfred Street ant St Leonardgate.

Coun Barker, who represents Bulk ward - the area most affected - has urged the council to resist the proposals. In a letter to cabinet member James Airey, Coun Barker identifies eight major departures from the Local Plan and its associated development briefs

He said: "The Council has just adopted an interim Local Plan after public consultation and a major public inquiry.

"The CR Chelverton proposals would throw that plan in the dust-bin. I think their proposals would be bad for residents, bad for the environment and bad for the established traders in the city centre. The council should stick to its plan and not roll over when developers come offering wads of cash for council land."

Coun Barker said that the proposals for a new relief road were much worse than previous proposals for an 'Eastern Relief Road'. They took traffic right past people's front doors in St Leonard's Court and Alfred Street. "The Local Plan quite rightly deleted the old proposals for an Eastern Relief Road.

Residential

"The arguments for a relief road were tested at the public inquiry and found wanting. Such a road would sever pedestrian routes to Freehold; it would cut off residential areas from the town centre.

"What is needed is a short stretch of road to improve access the car parks and nothing more. Beyond that we must improve public transport, introduce park and ride and bus priority."

He said that the plans for development on the Mitchell's Brewery site ran totally contrary to the planning brief.  

"What the council has asked for is a mixed development of a new 'Brewery Quarter' including residential, commercial, cultural and open space uses. Particularly exciting were plans to develop the region between the Dukes and the Grand Theatre as a cultural quarter.

Instead C R Chelverton are offering an agglomeration of 'big box' retail units. It is hard to see something less in keeping with the vision on which the council consulted the public."

Councillor Barker also said that he feared the scale of the C R Chelverton proposals would impact unfavourably on city centre businesses.

"we do need more shops to add to the retail vitality of the city. But we must be careful not to add so much retail capacity that the city centre is hollowed out by new developments.

"The council's own retail consultants identified a need for more capacity for bulky goods on the edge of the centre. They did not think there was capacity for another huge food store. That is of course precisely what C R Chelverton are proposing. These proposals are a try-on. They have nothing to do with good planning.

"They must be resisted."