DESPITE a wave of anticipation and excitement when one Calne Town Councillor announced they had an update on the progress toward the new Lidl store planning application - the news is, that there is no news. The application is still being determined by Wiltshire Council.
The new Lidl store and ten new employment units which would collectively create up to 300 new full and part time jobs for the town, was granted planning permission to be built on land to the east of Oxford Road in Calne in April 2023.
However, in May 2023, Tesco submitted an objection and asked Wiltshire Council to quash the planning permission granted to Lidl and reconsider the application as they believed the planning policy was not correctly followed in that 'the authority misinterpreted planning policy because the retail element did not accord with the allocation of the site for employment use in the neighbourhood plan' and 'the authority acted irrationally by placing undue reliance on the change to the use class despite the land being allocated for employment use in the neighbourhood plan'.
Around 4,000 members of the community actively registered their support for the Lidl development but the Pre Action-Protocol issued by Tesco led to the planning permission being quashed.
Lidl vowed to 'fight on' and resubmitted plans in August last year. A decision deadline was set for the 30th September.
When a previous decision date passed in May, Cllr Botterill told us: "This is a large-scale development and it is not uncommon in these circumstances for planning applications to take longer than the government’s timescales for determination.
“We will determine the application as quickly as possible as soon as relevant issues have been resolved.”
In a statement included in the agenda for the Calne Town Council meeting that took place on Monday, Cllr Sam Pearce-Kearney said in a statement : “I can provide an update on the Lidl application following a conversation with the planning department. The situation is the same as it was previously."
He went on to echo the words of Cllr Botterill adding that : “This is a large-scale development with lots of interest and it's not uncommon in these circumstances for planning applications to take longer than the government's timescales for determination.
“All the relevant matters are still being worked through and the council will determine the application as quickly as possible.”
In the meantime, the online planning application shows a letter to Wiltshire Council from Martin Robeson Planning Practice acting on behalf of Tesco PLC was sent to Wiltshire Council one day before the decision due date which states: 'Bearing in mind the July 2023 quashing of the decision due to a substantive misapplication of policy by Officers and the current lack of available material for public scrutiny, this is certainly a situation where it would be unreasonable for the application to be determined other than by the Development Management Committee.' The full letter can be read here.
Full planning application - https://development.wiltshire.gov.uk/pr/s/planning-application/a0i3z00001548R6AAI/2100081ful
