New supermarket could be coming to Chichester
Plans are in the pipeline for another supermarket in Chichester.
It will mean already tough competition between local Sainsbury's, Tesco, Lidl and Waitrose branches is set to be further ratcheted up.
The new store is proposed on the outskirts of the city in the Homebase DIY centre building, in Barnfield Drive – just yards from Sainsbury's – creating around 250 new jobs.
The southern area development control committee yesterday voted in favour of allowing the sale of convenience goods on the site, which will mainly be food.
This approval is subject to a formal consultation with the secretary of state to ensure the government would not 'call in' the application and hold an inquiry – a remote possibility.
The applicants, Brookhouse Group Ltd, told the district council the application was speculative at this stage, with no foodstore operator yet committed to the premises, and no physical works to the building were envisaged at this stage.
Chichester City Council objected to the proposal, with a claim there were already adequate large-scale food shopping stores adjacent to
the city.
It said the planning condition preventing the sale of food at the site was designed to ensure a diversity of out-of-town shopping, and the creation of an additional large-scale foodstore would be contrary to that objective.
There was also an objection from Arun District Council, which said retail development in out-of-centre locations in Chichester would cause significant harm to the centre of Bognor Regis by attracting trade away from it.
But retail planning consultants acting on behalf of Chichester District Council concluded the proposal would not have a detrimental effect on the health of either Chichester city centre or Bognor.
Agents for the applicants said an assessment concluded existing main stores were currently overtrading.
"All stores are still able to achieve significant turnovers, and therefore no long-term impact is likely to arise," they claimed.
Recommending approval, a report by planning officers said food shopping in the city centre was the 'top-up basket shop' rather than the weekly bulk-food shopping trip, which tended to take place at the large out-of-centre supermarkets –Sainsburys, Lidl and Tesco Extra – or Waitrose, an edge-of-centre store.
Cllr Quentin Cox said: "We don't actually need another supermarket, but that isn't an argument for refusing this.
"The main reason it won't harm the city centre is that all the harm has already been done."
The committee agreed with a recommendation to stipulate the Homebase unit should not be divided into individual smaller units providing different scales of retail development.
This is aimed at protecting the city centre.
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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