Isle of Wight Council planners have been congratulated on their decisions on recent applications by Tesco for new stores on the Island.
At the November meeting of the Development Control Committee, councillors rejected an application for a new store at the junction of High Street and Rectory Drive in Wootton, and yesterday evening they deferred consideration of a plan for a massive extension of the company’s Westridge store.
Mr Turner said,
“I congratulate planners who have taken the ‘green view’ on these major development proposals.
“It would be absurd to approve developments which damage small businesses in town centres, encourage car-borne shopping, and create demand for more and more products to come from the mainland when our highway infrastructure and ferries are both full to bursting point, and we are being pressed to release more of our precious green field sites for trailer parks. It is particularly absurd to argue that there is a demand for more shopping space to be provided when so many shops both in town centres lie empty, and when supermarkets are drawing custom away from town centres because of their unfair trading advantage of free parking. It is quite simply untrue to describe supermarkets as ‘creating jobs’ when they destroy them elsewhere.
“Of course, Tesco’s provide an important shopping choice for Islanders, as they do for mainland counterparts. But they, like other supermarkets, do little to promote Island-sourced products. Even those, like tomatoes, which they do sell are mostly taken to the mainland and then brought back again. All these unnecessary journeys clog up our roads and ferries, especially in the summer when they are under extreme pressure, and contribute to global warming.
“The councillors who were elected in May were left a legacy of unpopular and undesirable policies by their predecessors, and officers have had the difficult job of finding suitable conditions to apply to those policies to make developments more acceptable. In these cases, if the applications are to be approved, they should contain conditions to reduce traffic generation (on both roads and ferries) and the demand for trailer parking facilities and contribute to the maintenance of employment and sustainability of the local economy.”
He suggested as examples of the conditions which should be applied:
- No more trailers should come from the mainland to service the supermarket than at present, particularly at peak times of year;
- No more car-parking spaces should be provided;
- No trailers should be parked up other than at Tesco’s, but should go straight between the ferry terminals and Tesco’s;
- At least ten per cent of space within the store (or an equivalent amount adjoining the entrance to the store) should be made available to a local institution (such as the Farmers’ Market) for the sale of Island-originated produce which has not had to leave the Island.
