Tesco Planning Application Withdrawn
Tesco have withdrawn their planning application to replace their current store in Hook with an enlarged one.
Last week Hart published an independent retail assessment they had commissioned on the Tesco application. The assessment was dated January 2014. Unsurprisingly this assessment had concluded that there would be insufficient demand for both a Sainsbury’s superstore and an enlarged Tesco store in Hook. It also stated that were the two applications to be considered equally, the Tesco application for an enlarged store was far preferable to the Sainsbury’s store proposal on a long list of grounds including, obviously, scale and location.
At the Planning Committee meeting which considered the Sainsbury’s application, objectors had urged the committee to defer a decision on Sainbury’s until the two proposals could be reviewed. The Planning Committee refused to defer the decision even though Planning Officers must have known that an independent review of the Tesco application had already been commissioned by Hart and would be available in a matter of weeks.
Tesco’s plans for the current store are unknown and must be uncertain as it is hard to see how it will compete with a Sainsbury’s superstore in the village. Thanks to Hart’s planners we may now have a single viable supermarket in Hook in the wrong place and on the wrong scale – exactly what we warned them would happen.
Who are the planning committee members exactly and how do they have so much power in the face of logic and popular preference from hook residents?
Currently there is at least one elected Councillor from each Ward on the Planning Committee with a few additional members; I believe this will change soon to be strictly one Councillor per Ward but with replacements permitted when these members are unavailable. Planning officers make recommendations and although the committee is supposedly free to go against this they rarely seem to do so, for fear of appeals and the costs that would bring. Democracy, but not at any price! This was one case where a deferral should have been a no-brainer. District Council Elections are tomorrow, so make your voice heard!!
Stupid decision by the planners, they must think, ‘Yes, lets churn up another green field site that too away from most of the village so everyone needs to drive there, and then to build something that’s too big for the village and cause traffic chaos and leave an ugly area in the centre of the village that is desperate need of updating’
Where are these people coming from, and they certainly don’t live in Hook, that is being ruined. If you didn’t know any better, you might suspect a back-hander from Sainsburys !!!
Do theses committe memebers live in hook? the village won’t be able to handle the traffic flow and pressure it will cause complete havoc:-(. Meaning endless road maintenace and managment pot hole galore . The logic behing this is insane. Money quite obviously speaks volumes?