Tesco at Little Lever - Dossier - Point No 12

Response to parts of the Officer’s Report.

Point No 12 

The Officers Report states the following as supporting this Application

1)      Core Strategy policy P2 of the Bolton Core Strategy states that the Council will plan for

additional convenience floor space of up to 10,000 m² in town, district and local centres where local communities have good access.

Response:- This needs to be qualified.

Bolton Core Strategy states the following:-

“Retail and Leisure

4.14 The Core Strategy proposes to increase the quantity of retail floor space in the borough,

concentrated mostly in Bolton town centre. This reflects the objective of creating a transformed

and vibrant town centre, as well as complying with Government advice contained in PPS4.

This approach is supported by the findings of the council’s Retail and Leisure Study. This identifies a requirement up to 2026, of between 9,200 and 11,000 square metres for ‘convenience’ goods and between 74,300 and 134,600 square metres for ‘comparison’ goods, in addition to schemes that already have planning permission.

This additional floor space should be developed after 2016.”

This in itself needs further qualification in as much as the BRLS figures identify schemes that already have planning permission as being Sainsbury’s –Cricketers Way and Central Street Bolton.

It does not include the recently opened Tesco at Longcauseway Farnworth.

Including this development but ignoring the various other smaller Supermarkets which have been built since then and recalculating the figures from the BRLS the result is as follows:- (See Appendix)

The Bolton Core Strategy is saying that there is no need for additional Convenience retail floorspace until after 2016.

The recalculated figures show that thereafter – between 2016 and 2021 there is a need for an extra 1,130 sq metres. (See Appendix)

This is 598 sq metres less than the proposed 1,728 sq metres proposed for Pennine Pets.

The statement in the Retail and Planning document and in the Officers report fails to qualify the figure of 10,000 sq metres with the time frame and the additional capacity already built (by Tesco) since the Retail and Leisure Report. It is therefore misleading.

Conclusion

This part of the statement in Core Strategy Policy P2 thus cannot justify the need for this development in 2013 and is irrelevant to the Application.