Planning reports recommend refusal of Newcastle Emlyn supermarket plans
Carmarthenshire’s Planning Department today published its reports on the Cawdor and Lidl (Castle Motors) planning applications and has recommended refusal for both when they go before the Planning Committee on Thursday, 10 September.
This is undoubtedly good news for the town, but as is so often the way, it is unlikely that this is the last we have heard of the Cawdor plan.
The planning report on the Cawdor planning application for a supermarket in the middle of town runs to about 50 pages, and although it comes to the right conclusion, the report itself makes for depressing reading for anyone hoping that the Council really cares about the future of the town.
The main reasons for recommending refusal seem to be that Cawdor failed to provide responses and information on a whole string of relatively minor issues, such as landscaping, the appearance of the supermarket, pedestrian access, estimates of traffic on Saturdays, car parking facilities, surface water drainage, proposals for dealing with land instability and measures for protecting otters and other wildlife.
Taken together, that is a long list, but none of them would present an insurmountable obstacle to a determined developer.
On the other hand, the concerns of local residents and traders about the impact on the town and its chronic road congestion are dismissed in the report, which sees no problems with the plan.
Carmarthenshire County Council is famous for not being a fan of open government. The report takes delight in announcing that the council will only publish what it has to publish by law, and if anyone wants to find out more, they will have to apply with a Freedom of Information request. In that way, it has refused to publish two crucial documents relating to the Cawdor application. One deals with traffic issues, and the other with the impact on the town’s existing shops.
Bits of the two reports are quoted in the Planning Report, but usually only the conclusions. So we hear, for example, “Nathaniel Lichfield Partnership believe the proposed store should be beneficial to the vitality and viability of Newcastle Emlyn town centre.” We are not told how Messrs Nathaniel Lichfield reached that conclusion.
In total there were four different retail impact assessments produced for the Cawdor and Lidl applications, and three of them were seen by objectors. All contains very similar estimates of population, potential retail spend for the area and estimates of actual spending in the town’s shops.
The figures were questioned by objectors because the reports overestimate how much potential business there is for a new supermarket, and underestimate by a massive amount how much is being spent in the town’s shops already. The reports also completely ignored approved plans for a large new CK’s in Llandysul and a very large new supermarket in Cardigan.
A bit worrying, you might think. Not a bit of it. The planning report politely asked Nathaniel Lichfield about this, who replied that they agreed with their own report. So that’s all right then.
Except that it’s not, because the only way the new supermarket could work is by grabbing a huge slice of business from the smaller shops. Result: a dying high street, job losses and the end of local businesses.
On transport and traffic, the council is similarly secretive. It concludes that a busy supermarket with a junction onto the A484 a few yards from the busy junction with Sycamore Street would pose no serious problems for road safety or traffic congestion.
The Council should come and have a look at what the traffic is really like on a weekday morning when children are going to school and the mart is starting up.
Bizarrely, no mention at all is made of the gridlock that regularly occurs in Sycamore Street and College Street. Presumably nobody going to the supermarket, and none of the delivery vehicles will ever use that way into town.
Apart from that, a lot of the issues raised by the Environment Agency and other bodies are dealt with in a way that is so timid as to almost defy belief. On a whole string of things which directly affect local people such as noise, opening hours, air pollution and lighting, we are told that detailed measures would be worked out only after the application is approved.
The fact that the site was once a rubbish tip is mentioned in passing, but not picked up, and the Welsh language does not merit a single mention anywhere in the document, even though a supermarket could have a very damaging effect on the local economy by destroying Welsh-speaking businesses.
So what will happen next? Will the Cawdor application now be withdrawn only to be re-submitted in a month or two from now? Will the mystery Cawdor supermarket actually turn out to be Lidl, as the planning report hints it would like to see?
Watch this space. Dracula is back in his crypt, but with those long winter nights approaching, you’d better stock up on garlic and crucifixes.