The BBC are carrying an interesting story about Tesco’s previous building blunders.
With the company planning on rebuilding in Bradley Stoke we thought this might be of interest.
Obviously, none of the cases involve our own town, but it does give some context to the current planning process.
In one case, a store in Manchester was build 20% bigger than the plans allowed.
In another, a pile of rubble remains outside a store in an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
A company spokesman told the BBC: “Local authorities control the planning process, not Tesco and it is a democratic and tough regime. We work hard to put forward proposals that reflect peoples’ concerns and are acceptable locally.
“We don’t always get things right, as was the case in Stockport, but we have worked with the council there to find a solution.
Let’s hope they get things right in BS32!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Micheal J // Aug 26, 2006 at 9:09 am
The problem with the Tesco site is that the council made the mistake of selling not just the land that the current store stands on, but also a very large area of the surrounding ground. This makes it very difficult to control what Tesco does with it even with planning controls.
Living in Bradley Stoke makes me very aware of the volume of traffic and it seems that Tesco will be only too pleased to have even more vehicles pouring into the site. If you want to see what I mean travel down the M5 on a weekend (Saturday or Sunday) and see what the queues are like getting off at Cribbs Causeway. Do we really need something similar along Brook Way and Bradley Stoke Way? This is what will happen because remember, Tesco’s don’t just want to increase the size of their store, they want to have a number of large warehouse style units as well. Looking at the plans I would guess that they would like something along the lines of the Shield Retail Park at Filton (Woolworths, JJB, Matalan and Next etc) as well as their much larger store. I don’t believe that all the additional customers that this might attract will walk or cycle to the development.
Do we really need this size of development in Bradley Stoke, wouldn’t it be better to have a slightly increased Tesco and a much more landscaped development?
2 j nicklin // Feb 2, 2008 at 1:01 pm
if you don not want the tesco built why shop there. they are only building a bigger tesco because the other one can not cope
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