Dear Sir,
Following an investigation by your reporter, Saiqa
Chaudhari, into whether or not the proposed Tesco development at Little Lever
was amongst the 100 plus developments axed or put on hold by that company,
apparently they have gone to great lengths to assure us that this is not the
case.
After all the hoo-ha surrounding the application and the
bending over backwards of the Council to accommodate them, I am tempted to say
‘Well, they would say that wouldn’t they’
The truth of the matter is that thirteen months after the
Planning Committee passed the buck over to the Director and nine months after he
made the final decision to approve the application, not one sod has been turned
nor one brick laid.
Further to this, as of today’s date and according to the
Land Registry, the developer hasn’t even bought the land. Then again, if you
were not intending to proceed, you wouldn’t shell out some £2m for
nothing.
Another interesting point concerns the Sec 106 agreement
between the Council, the landowners and the developer. Normally this would refer
to an amount of money freely contributed to the local community by the
developers to mitigate any negative effects of the development.
This had been mooted for this £5m development to be in
the region of £20,000 to £30,000.
Unfortunately no specific sum is mentioned in the Sec 106
agreement.
If the Council had been a little less tardy in
introducing the new Community Infrastructure Levy which broadly replaces Sec 106
monies, then Tesco would have been stuck with a Levy of some £233,000. Lucky escape !.
Given, in my view, that the only benefit of this proposal
would be to clean up the site, if this does not proceed in the near future, then
the residents are stuck with this eyesore for who knows how long.
As some football commentator once said ‘It’s not over
till it’s over’
Paul Richardson
Ripon Close
Little Lever
