News. . . .
19 April 2009
Your views on the proposed new supermarket
Cawdor Cars (Eiddo Davies Properties Ltd) has submitted a planning application to Carmarthenshire Council to demolish its showroom on Tanyard Lane, its forecourt adjoining the Cawdor car park, a bungalow and a former car parts shop.
At a special meeting on Thursday 26th March 2009, Newcastle Emlyn Town Council voted in favour of planning permission for the redevelopment of a site in central Newcastle Emlyn which would allow for the opening of a large supermarket (3 times the size of CK’s) by a national chain.
There are only 8 of the possible 10 council seats occupied at the moment as 2 places remain to be filled. All 8 councillors were present at the meeting. After much discussion councillors could not find any objections to the application. Two councillors, Cllr Odette Little and Cllr Cefin Evans declared an interest and did not take part.
Cllr Pauline Evans voted against
Cllr Maureen Webley, Cllr Fiona White, Cllr Peter Lewis, Cllr Alan Jones, Cllr Hazel Evans voted in favour.
Special meeting called by town traders
Up to 100 people attended a special meeting held in the 3 Compasses pub on Monday evening 20th April. The meeting heard many speakers condemn the decision taken by the Town Council which they say would have a huge impact on the town. Opponents claimed the decision was taken without proper public consultation and that the Council’s decision does not reflect the views of the majority of town residents. No one at the meeting spoke in favour of the proposed development.
- Planning Application W/20805
- Graph of UK Car Sales – BBC News website
- Ghost Town Britain – the effects of supermarkets on communities
- Good Neighbours? – community impacts of supermarkets (PDF)
Plan of Proposed Supermarket – click for larger version
Straw Poll
You can only vote once, but choose as many answers as you like.
[poll id="3"]
A planning application is also current for a Lidl Supermarket on the Castle Motors site opposite CK’s Supermarket. Click here for more details
I have just browsed some of the comments in the Guest Book of this excellent site and many make comment on how wonderful the shopping is in Newcastle Emlyn. More importantly, in the light of this awful proposal for yet another ‘retail convenience store’, many of the contributors to the guest book say don’t let supermarkets spoil the town. We have something unique here and it needs protecting.
We must not let this town become like many others, you only have to look at Cardigan to see the effects of large supermarkets. So people of Newcastle Emlyn, galvanise yourselves and support your local traders. Take heed of the words of the well known song ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ because once the supermarkets take hold there is no going back!
Last year Carmarthenshire County Council went through an elaborate consultation exercise to come up with a vision for Newcastle Emlyn. It covered a lot of topics, from park benches to CCTV, but there was no mention of any plans to tear down a huge chunk of the town, cut public parking capacity by nearly 50% and slap a supermarket down bang slap in the middle of town. Of course, the plans had not been made public at the time, but if Carmarthenshire County Council thought it was important enough to consult residents on a lot of relatively minor issues, you would think that they would publicise and hold a public consultation on the biggest development project the town has seen in years. But I picked up the Carmarthen Journal today to read that the deadline for comments on the proposal was…today.
The Town Council did not oppose the plans, apparently on the grounds that (1) the County Council never listens to them anyway, and (2) they could see no reasons to object from a planning perspective. So let’s help them out:
(1) The plans will apparently involve the demolition of the Cawdor Garage and a good many buildings which back on to it, including workshops, the former premises of GC Factors and a bungalow. It will involve the closure of the car park, which accounts for about 40% of the parking space available in a town which is already bursting at the seams. No planning implications there, then.
(2) The construction of a supermarket bang in the heart of the town. Have any of the councillors ever been to Cardigan and had a look at the devastation caused there by Tesco and Focus? At the last count there were about 14 empty retail premises in the High Street in Cardigan, whereas currently in Newcastle Emlyn just about every square foot of retail space is in use. Perhaps there’s a link there somewhere? For a good many visitors, Newcastle Emlyn is a miraculous survivor from an earlier age where all market towns had their own butchers, bakers, fishmongers, florists, ironmongers, haberdashers, etc. etc.
(3) At least 20 homes surround the site. Currently they put up with traffic noise during the day, but enjoy peace and quiet in the evenings and at the weekends. I’m sure the people who live there will be very pleased to have delivery lorries turning up at the crack of dawn, and wave cheerily at all the shoppers who trundle past their doors seven days a week from early in the morning until late in the evenings.
(4) Have the councillors ever noticed how much traffic there is in town and how unsuited the roads are to big lorries?
Why kill a small market town which is so successful, even in this recession, by allowing a supermarket in to kill off so many great little businesses? But then, I suppose, Cawdor will be able to snap up all those empty shops for a song in a couple of years from now and finally bring us into the 21st century with an even more exciting development plan.
Well, after my rant last night I decided to have a look at the planning application. One of the councillors was quoted as saying in the Carmarthen Journal that the application had been submitted on spec, but the planning fees alone came toover £6,000,and Cawdor used a firm of planning consultants in Llanelli to complete the mass of documentation, including an impact assessment. They won’t have had much change out of £15,000, so I think it’s fair to say that the application is pretty serious.
By rejigging the site,the plan makes it clear that there will be little impact on parking in town – there would be about 96 spaces, if I remember rightly, so objections on these grounds will not help.
Where the applicationdoes get onto more dodgy ground is the impact assessment, i.e. what might be the impact on the town’s other shops. As you might expect, the application concludes that there will be no effect on most existing businesses, and it argues that there is a lot of retail business going out of town when people go to supermarkets in Carmarthen and Cardigan – a rather incredible £17.9 million, it reckons. Both arguments are obviously wrong – there would be a big hit on the small independent retailers and the figures for supermarket spending for NCE and the surrounding area are massively overstated. The formula they use might work for England, but there is a reason why we have Lidl and not Waitrose here.
And that brings me onto another major failing in the assessment. It completely ignores the plans, presumably still current, for Lidl to open up in Station Road.
So valid objections to this plan will have to concentrate on
# the devastating impact it will have on existing businesses in town
# the environmental impact (more traffic, more large delivery vehicles) 7 days a week, from first thing in the morning to late evening.
# the impact on the lives of the people who live in properties near the Cawdor site
# the impact that this major development will have on our roads and traffic flows as well as on the drainage and sewerage systems – all the people needed to spend all those millions of pounds will also be spending a lot of pennies.
Finally, the planning application asks if the applicant has carried out any public consultation. No, they said. Why would they bother when you have Cawdor’s clout?
Let’s just hope that our county councillors have more fight in them than the town council.
Hello,
As with the previous contributors, I am totally horrified that one of the larget supermarkets may be allowed to set up in Newcastle Emlyn.
The attraction and success of Newcastle Emlyn is surely the variety and quality of the small shops available in the town, and the personal and friendly service they offer.
If this proposal is allowed to go ahead, it will, due to the massive purchasing power of the large chains, surely undercut all our other shops in terms of price, and there will be no restriction on the kind of goods it will be allowed to sell, resulting in the sure demise of a number of the small local traders.
Furthermore, if you look at the plans for the development, I am sure you will agree that a number of the points made in justification are highly questionable, and must be seen as a smokescreen for what is really going on.
i) When was the last time you heard of anyone being run over in Tanyard Lane – I admit I have only been here for 3 years, but I have never heard of this. Neither have I ever seen any serious incidents at the junction with the main road.
ii)There is no guarantee that the car parking spaces currently available for public use will be retained when the new store opens – It is quite conceivable that the new owners will only allow parking for those who are using the store, resulting in a large net loss of car parking facility.
iii)What happens from a traffic point of view if the entrance near the old Cawdor Hotel is opened up to traffic. We will then have a rat run of cars attempting to bypass the other junction, chaos will ensue and we will end up with a much more dangerous situation than we have at the moment.
I would urge all readers to use their voices and comment on the planning website to Carmarthen before it is too late.
The town council generally does a good job in difficult and pretty thankless circumstances, so their decision not to reject this application was very disappointing. It is not clear what our county councillor thinks of the application.
I am sure that the people of Newcastle Emlyn, who are overwhelmingly against building a supermarket in the middle of town, will watch their town and county councillors very closely over this. After all we expect them to reflect the wishes of their electorates, even though, to be fair, the town council struggles to attract candidates.
If they go with the scheme, I hope the next elections will be rather more lively, with the town giving its politicians a powerful boot up the backside to remind them that they are meant to be serving us, the people, rather than private business interests.
I’m not particularly a big fan of supermarkets, but if I was to choose any in NCE it would be Lidls as it would of at least add an extra bit of variety to the area.
I would assume if Tesco, for instance, were going ahead this it would put an end to the Lidl plan? Is there some sort of favouritism within the council as to which supermarket they prefer, or who is putting in the planning application?
I have just been informed of the dammning comments a FEW of The people of NCE have wriiten on this web site and so I would like to add my POSITIVE fews, as I am a mother to one and I work in the town. I also have to do my weekly shop and would like to be able to get my shopping localy to support local. I feel that I can not do that easily or cheaply enough at the moment. Also wouldn’t a new development bring more money, jobs and who knows possibly increase the value of houses in the area. Life is tough and getting tougher! This could keep the town as a town and stop it from becoming ANOTHER village!
Duncan, You need have no worries on that score. I’m absolutely convinced that regardless of who your old school friends are, or who you have done business with in the past, or is married to your sister or cousin, these factors have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the decision you might make as a Town or County Councillor as to whether planning permission be approved on a particular project.
I expect this issue to be raised in future Town Council meetings and I have full confidence that councillors will give it further detailed and unbiased consideration taking into full account the views of the towns people.
As a resident of Newcastle Emlyn for the past 25years, I have shopped and supported all business in the town faithfully during this time. I ALSO do a food shop usually in Cardigan Tesco or Carmarthen’s Tesco or Morrison’s on a fairly regular basis BUT this does not mean i don’t buy in our local shops in town. I buy all my electrical goods with JDR Thomas and Goleudy, my clothes in Ededa J and Seconds Ahead!Lovely shoes in Ruby’s, flowers from the three florists, any cooking utensils and gifts from the baytree, baby gifts from little Gems,My meat i buy from both butchers and I even have the odd coffee in town.
So come on WAKE UP you people from New Castle Emlyn and support this new new Venture.
Open your eyes and look around you, appreiciate what we have and look forward to the town coming alive!
WAKING UP will be the least of the problems for us residents of Newcastle Emlyn near this site. GETTING TO SLEEP will be the problem. There will be a huge increase in traffic, noise and activity at least 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, with only one entrance to the site on Ffinant Square right next to an already very difficult junction.
The planning applicants want it both ways. On the one hand they justify the development on the grounds that is will attract large numbers of new shoppers from out of town. On the other they have to argue that the effect on traffic will be minimal.
OK. Imagine the flow of traffic in and out out of the current Cawdor car park increasing 10 or 20 fold as it must do if the customer figures which justify the supermarket are to be believed. Imagine half a dozen cars queuing on Ffinant Square to turn right into Water Street and another half a dozen queuing to turn right into the supermarket access road right next to it. Now imagine it is “school rush” time. Cars and buses are coming thick and fast down Old Graig Street and out of Water Street from the Primary and Secondary Schools. A couple of residents of Quarry Ffinant with kids are queuing to get back into their road and holding back traffic trying to leave town. Now throw into the mess a cattle lorry, a Land Rover with sheep trailer that can’t reverse and an HGV on its way to deliver to Tescos in Cardigan. No-one can turn right or left. In other words complete bloody GRIDLOCK with queued traffic tailing back in every direction. And this is before a disabled-sticker wearing resident of Ffinant Square decides to park outside his home to unload!
This, fellow residents of Newcastle Emlyn is what you will get if this ill-conceived, money grabbing, rape of the town’s land resources goes ahead. Everyone involved with this plan, including the Town Council which voted for it, should hang their heads in shame.
If shoppers can buy everything they want under one roof that is where the majority will remain assuming there would be enough space in the adjoining car park. Yes it will bring people to town but not into the high street. You just have to look at Cardigan and see what has happened there before the recession began.
Newcastle Emlyn is a unique town – we still have the traditional shops and sad to say that once a large store comes here, it will affect the town overnight. Do we have to wait and see this happen to prove a point?
And what about the rubbish they generate with even more useless packaging for the landfills. The traffic/parking situation is terrible now and unable to cope with anymore cars. Our town is getting busier with more traffic than ever. How could we possibly cope with all the noise and polution especially with the larger lorries delivering day and night past residents houses.
Has anyone seen the chaos when you have to drop your kids to school? Is anyone listening at the council? Carmarthen council don’t care. Even when we were asked a couple of years ago about our vision for the town – what happened to all our comments? Many issues about our town have been neglected for years and its about time Carmarthenshire Council woke up to the fact that they are exist from tax payers money. Arent they meant to work for us?
I do shop local now and have found I can get everything I want in town if I CAN PARK, coming onto Toni’s point that I do agree that some items do cost more.
I used to shop in Cardigan when I first moved here until I realised how much I was paying for the fuel! It worked out for me cheaper to get everything in NCE and save an hour of travel time in the process.
Our town is unique and friendly town to shop in. Majority of the shops always have a moment to smile and greet you. Our local community needs somewhere to meet friends and browsing the shops and spending time in one of the cafes, buying everything we need – all gives a pleasurably shopping experience plus keeps the shops in business. And the tourists if they can park, must return for the same reasons.
I have seen the town go through many changes from being completely empty over 15 years ago with many of the shops boarded up and to more recently, looking smarter with more interesting shops.
We need our local shops to keep the local community going and to attract the tourists. If no one supports the town then there is no future for anyone who lives here.
Will it all end up like it is in the USA? Ghost towns and just large shopping malls with no personality or uniqueness just selling the same thing everywhere you look. Faceless people in faceless shopping malls?
How sad is that.
Currently the co-op have a near monopoly in the Newcastle Emlyn as Spar/Cooperative (Somerfield is now owned by Coop) have a join purchasing agreement. Outside Newcastle Emlyn the choice is limited to Tesco/Morrisons in Cardigan/Aberystwyth/Carmarthen. Heading inland – Lampeter – Coop again. I would personally welcome Sainsburys/Waitrose with open arms. A high end store would add to the town and its status. Another Tesco/Coop/Morrisons or Lidl is not needed. I think if the store was of high quality then it would actually add to the town’s business not detract from it. Times have changed, ‘The sainsbury effect’ – supermarkets have been shown to actually increase business to small towns. If the local butcher is good enough – organic, etc – they can survive. A good supermarket is essential to keep a town a town in todays world – CK’s selling beef from brazil doesnt help the economy.
One person who welcomed the plans said that a supermarket would bring new jobs to town. No, it won’t. If you read the planning application, you will see that a net 5 full-time jobs will go to be replaced by 10 part-time ones.
As for Sainsbury’s, well the current Somerfield store in Lampeter is going to be taken over by Sainsbury’s. NCE is much more likely to get another Tesco. God help us all if these plans go ahead.
It appears that this is a general planning application, as with any business if your thinking of a change of use its always a good idea to get planning permission, it increases the prospective selling price of your business.
This might be just Cawdor keeping their options open with the current downturn, a get out of jail free card so to speak i.e possible long term intentions or just a means of preventing the negative balance sheet effects of failing commercial property values.
Generally credit availability to companies is based on current valuation of their assets – could be just a means of obtaining better credit facilities – better asset values means you appear more solvent, so can borrow more.
As regard to the fees any successful applications would be easily offset by its revaluation as a supermarket site.
Maybe several of the large supermarkets have been sniffing potential sites – which led Cawdor down this route.
Personally it seems like a smart move by Cawdor whatever their intentions.
A drivethru MacDonalds/KFC? I’ll just let everyone ponder that one, or is that just tempting fate.
Interesting regarding Sainsburys – they would need several shops in this area for its venture into Lampeter to be profitable.
Dic du. Total full time equivalent of existing jobs is 15. Proposed full time equivalent jobs will be 20. I see that as gain.
Personally i think the application as far as jobs are concerned are greatly under estimated with numbers as I think there will be a lot more incremental jobs available.
Why do you think it will be Tesco??? Nobody knows yet what store will come. Not even Mr Cawdor!
Let’s look at the evidence for what happens when supermarkets come to small market towns.
When an out of town supermarket opened in the market town of Fakenham, Norfolk:
# there was a 33% increase in retail vacancies in the town
# five of eighteen convenience stores closed
# convenience stores lost 64% of their previous trade
# the town centre environment noticeably deteriorated
Stalham another Norfolk market town has also suffered from the impact of an edge of town superstore. Tesco opened on the edge of Stalham in 2002 and it has already affected local retailers so much that some have closed down. The local Co-op is now a funeral parlour, the baker’s has become a Chinese takeaway restaurant and the butcher had to go into wholesaling to survive.
Turnover at the Stalham Shopper, a local grocery store, went down by 50%, but the owner is determined to stay open. The Tesco store was built on the town car park, parking at the new Tesco car park is restricted to two hours and local traders report that shoppers no longer walk from the car park to the town centre.
In Hunstanton, which has a thriving Tesco, the petrol station has closed. Brian Nokes, manager of Scoop and Save, a general grocery store, said he lost a third of his takings when Tesco opened. In Warminster the turnover of town centre convenience stores went down 75%
In 2004, a Tesco store was built on the ring road on the outskirts of Dumfries. The old Tesco store took £300,000 a week, but the new store is taking around £1m a week. Rab Smith, chairman of the Dumfries Retailers Association, argues that this money is coming straight out of the town centre which is becoming a ‘clone town’ mainly occupied by charity shops, video shops and high street chain stores. The independent traders are losing around 24-25% of their trade and the majors have lost about 12% of their trade – that’s around £40,000 a week. The only four businesses that aren’t losing out to Tesco are a kilt shop, a jewellers and two hairdressers. Over the last six months, Dumfries has lost at least a dozen shops, with another 20-30 just about hanging on. On average there is one shop closing each week.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=2369
The theory in the case of NCE that the loss of trade to a supermarket of 11,000 sq ft in the centre of town, will be offset by increasing numbers of shoppers being attracted into the High Street and spending money in small independent stores doesn’t appear to be born out by the experience of other market towns.
Customers who are loyal to the supermarket chain, reputed to be in the running for the planning permission at the Cawdor Proposed Site; at preset go to Cardigan or Carmarthen to do their shopping. While in these towns, they also spend their money in other shops at that location. In having this supermarket sited in Newcastle Emlyn there is a chance that they will do other shopping in the town, therefore keeping the money in the town.
Newcastle Emlyn has a wide range of excellent individual privately owned shops that sell good quality goods and is quite compact. If the people opposed to this development, would only take a few moments to think of ‘Newcastle Emlyn’ then it becomes quite obvious that once the customers are in the town, the secret is to keep them in the town. If I were in business in Newcastle Emlyn today, I would welcome the proposed development because, with the arrival of the tourist season, many of whom actively search for these well known supermarkets, they will not be going to Cardigan to spend their money. This proposed development will also offer new; much needed jobs to the town.
To oppose this development would be extremely short sited.
H P Morgan, How I wish your theory as stated above were true, but I don’t believe it is. Where is your evidence? Can you point me to any cases from the UK where the injection of a large supermarket into a market town has improved the lot of local traders and increased the *overall* number of people in work? I have plenty of evidence to the contrary.
What is often forgotten as well is that of every pound spent in a local store, a far higher proportion stays in the local economy than a pound spent in a local supermarket.
A study by NEF (the New Economics Foundation) found that £1 spent in a local shop selling local produce puts twice as much money back into the local community as £1 spent in a supermarket. [http://tinyurl.com/cc5uum]
A Friends of the Earth study of local food schemes found that on average just over half of business turnover was returned to the local economy, compared to as little as 5 per cent for supermarkets. [http://tinyurl.com/d5rrpe]
Have you seen the “Clone Town Britain” report by the NEF? This is what Newcastle Emlyn could very easily become [http://tinyurl.com/6cdtkj]
My Dear Jeremy, I ran a business in Newcastle Emlyn for over 14yrs and I think I know how the general people of Newcastle Emlyn respond.
In recent years I have assisted at a retail outlet until about 2 yrs ago and was heavily involved with the tourists that came to the town. One question that was asked daily was; Is there a (name of outlet) in Emlyn? When told that there was not, I was asked where the nearest one was. I never saw those customers again during their stay in the area.
To me, it stands to reason that if the outlet in question was in the town, they would not have out of the town to spend their money.
That is from personal experience.
Having read the previous comments, it seems that people are against an out of town store. This however is not out of town but IN town and would undoubtedly draw people into the town and create a buzz all year round. This in turn would radiate more footfall and increase business throughout the town. If on the other hand the supermarket gets turned down ,how then would it affect our little town if this development was sold as individual units which could possibly open hairdresers, newsagents, butchers, bakers, boutiques, florists, coffee shops etc., etc….
I don’t think that this would benefit anyone. Think hard before voicing your objections!!
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.
There has been a lot said about the proposed development in Newcastle emlyn, how it will destroy the town. Supermarkets do destroy the towns I agree but the supermarkets that destroy are the ones that are built outside of town like Cardigan and Llanelli! The people who do the complaining have not complained about the other proposal which would be out of town and would have an adverse effect taking people away from the town when Newcastle Emlyn need people in town.
Look at Marks and Spencers, they are in the middle of Carmarthen town and all around it are shops; clothes, butchers, pubs, shoe and paper shops which are all feeding from it.
It’s developments out of town that cause problems not the ones in town.
Think about it!
Mae ‘na lawer o ddadlau wedi bod yn ddiweddar ynglyn a’r datblygiad nweydd sydd yn y fantol yng Nghastell Newydd Emlyn. Os y daw – mae ‘na ddadl y bydd yn ddifetha’r dre. Mae hyn yn rhanol wir gan fod archfarchnadoedd ar ynylon y trefydd yn denu pobl allan o’r dref ei hun, ee- Aberteifi a Llanelli.
Nid wyf yn cofio clywed cwynion am y cynllun blaenorol i agor archfarchnad y tu allan i’r dref!!
O brofiad-ee. Caerfyrddin- gyda Marks and Spencers yn y canol – gyda siopau bychain o gwmpas ym mhobman, mae yna brysurdeb a phobl yn llu yno bob amser ac yn yr holl siopau o amgylch.
Datblygiadau ar gyrrion y trefydd sydd yn niweidiol, nid y rhai yn y trefydd!
I too was an observer at last nights special Town Council meeting and I wholeheartedly agree with Richard Vale’s observations and comments. Regarding Richard’s thoughts about looking to other towns who have successfully campaigned against supermarket planning applications there is an excellent website, http://www.tescopoly.org which gives details of local communities who have succeeded in stopping these applications. This site also has lots of campaign resources and ideas, including sample letters. Incidently Newcastle Emlyn is listed on this site as a new Local Campaign along with a number of other Welsh towns who are fighting similar battles.
Dick, mae’n ymddangos bod Lidl wedi rhoi’r ffidil yn y to. ‘Na dreni yn ‘y marn i. Dioddefwr cyntaf cynlluniau Cawdor, siŵr o fod.
It seems that Lidl has given up. A shame, in my view. Probably the first casualty of Cawdor’s plans.
There is hundreds of thousands of pounds profit to be made by one of these landowners. I would be *very* surprised if Castle Motors and Lidl have “given up”. I would think it more likely that a “tactical withdrawal” has been made, for reasons only known to the parties involved and their lawyers. If the Cawdor proposal fails to receive planning permission, I bet Castle Motors will be back before long.
I don’t think car vendors give up so easily. They just try to sell you a different model.
Opponents of either proposal should also be aware of an often used tactic by supermarkets trying to get a foothold in an area. When the original proposal fails to receive planning, they accept a scaled down proposal as a compromise, only to return a few years down the line with expansion plans.
Big supermarkets have huge power and have a habit of getting their way.
Personally I welcome the new supermarket, as a consumer and as a regular visitor to Newcastle Emlyn. Here are several reasons why:
1.) The large supermarket will offer us products unavailable in the local stores.
2.) The local stores charge ridiculous and unfair prices for their products, whilst larger chains offer good bargains.
3.) We have to travel all the way to Cardigan to get to the nearest large supermarket making us spend a lot of money on fuel! It would be nice to do some good shopping nearby instead.
4.) Young, carless parents with small children can benefit greatly by having the convenience of a nearby supermarket which offers cheaper products.
Only a small portion of the stores in NCE will lose their products as they cannot compete with the larger chain. However, the hairdresser’s, the pubs, the cafes, etc. will not only not lose money they may even experience higher profits due to more people shopping in NCE!
Just my two pennies worth.
I think a new store off the main road of NCE would benefit not only jobs, and shoppers but also perhaps people may actually stop parking half way up the town near boots etc, and causing great jams of traffic. it’s a nightmare to drive through the town on most days!
And why should the town not have a variety to choose from.
I have shopped in NCE and Carmarthen, and cardigan for many years, and cardigan only went completely by the wayside when woolworths went! NCE is a lovely place to shop, with all the different traders there, maybe a few less coffee shops may make room for even more! slight waffle there sorry.
We actually come from south Carmarthenshire to spend time in NCE because it’s a proper town – not a clonesville. Bliss! No major supermarket or McD’s in sight. NCE and Narbeth should have some kind of conservation status, including state financial aid, to retain their current character. Cardigan, Carmarthen and Haverfordwest have all withered on the vine, having once been great places to visit and shop. Please don’t let NCE go the same way.
I believe any sympathetic build of a supermarket would be the making of the town.
The business’s who are objecting will benefit, because the larger majority of people are shopping in outlining towns for basic need shopping.
CK & Somerfield is so painfull to shop, as the business’s have not grown with the demand nor the initiative to realise that there is a need due to the larger community in the town.
NE needs to change for growth and prosperity, at a time when people are losing jobs, the cost of living is rising so how can this not be a benefit to the town.
If NE wanted to stay in the dark ages, why was approval given to build many new and some large expensive houses encouraging people to move into the area not opposed, those people now enjoy the benefits of village life in a town and have bought in a lot of wealth to the area.
The parking on double yellow lines in the town causes absolute chaos and this cannot continue therefore the changes could only be better environmentally for all of us.
This supermarket build cannot be compared with other towns as it is within the town not out of town.