Report on Town Council Special Meeting
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Mayor of Newcastle Emlyn Cllr Maureen Webley called a special meeting of the Town Council last night – Tuesday 5th May 2009 – to discuss developments on the Supermarket planning application by Eiddo Davies Properties Ltd (Cawdor Cars).
This report is by Richard Vale who attended the meeting:
“At the special Council meeting held last night, the Town Council took another look at the plans. The meeting was well attended, and there was an interesting discussion. As an observer, it was clear what a difficult job the council faces with this application, which is almost certainly the most complex and controversial one they have ever had to deal with, and they certainly have not been helped by the poor information provided to them by the applicant and Carmarthenshire County Council.
“As quite a few people suspected, the applicant’s analysis of the commercial impact of the new supermarket was a very flawed document. The council now has access to two other reports, one from Lidl and the other produced by an independent group. These show that Cawdor’s figures are way, way out of line with what other specialists believe.
“Second, the Highways Department appears not yet to have reported on the plans, although they did carry out a traffic census on a single day back in January. The impression I gained, especially after impressive contributions from Councillor Fiona White and others, was that, all other considerations aside, the application should fail on the grounds of road safety and the devastating impact it will have on traffic in town.
“One important piece of information to come out of last night’s meeting was that this is a full planning application. This means that if the application succeeds, there will be no going back and neither the council nor anyone else will have any more say in the matter. Given that nobody, apart from Cawdor, knows which supermarket chain is likely to move in, the town and county councils are in effect being asked to sign a blank cheque.
“It is probably safe to assume that we are not about to get a branch of Harrods, and that the likely suspects will be Tesco, Sainsbury, Morrisons, Asda or Co-op. All of these companies (except for Co-op), and Tesco especially, are extremely successful at pushing through planning applications in the teeth of often overwhelming local opposition, and they certainly have far more experience and expertise to bring to bear than our local authorities. This means that opponents of the scheme can expect a very tough battle indeed over the next few months. Perhaps they should look at the handful of other small towns which have successfully kept Tesco out and see what we can learn from them.
“Another important step would be for the council to look at holding a local referendum on the plans. That would certainly be a powerful and democratic way of making the community’s views known loud and clear.
“In the meantime, I am sure that that everybody who is worried about the future of the town will be grateful to Councillor Webley for the honest and courageous way she went about making the council take another look at the plans.”
