Lidl effect 'could hit market'

10:21am Monday 15th September 2008

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THE damaging affect a cut-price Lidl's would have on Bridport's twice-weekly street market has not been properly assessed, Mayor Martin Ray claimed this week.

He told the plans committee that the German-based company's proposed new store off St Andrew's Road would attract the same type of "price sensitive" customers.

"The people who go to Lidl are the people who usually use the market because they are going for the cheaper product," he said.

But this important concern had not been taken account of in the company's town centre "impact assessment", he claimed, and as a result the council had failed to add it to its long list of official objections.

Coun Ray told The News: "The district council's consultants now say that it looks as if Lidl have not considered the impact their coming here would have on the market.

"If that is so then they have not really been looking at Bridport at all because the market is a major part of the town.

"As a town council it is part of our duty to protect our market traders especially as everyone who pays council tax in Bridport is subsidised by the market traders' rents."

"It is a point for us to make when Lidl resubmit their planning application."

The committee heard that Lidl has now submitted revised plans for the site layout, taking into account highway authority requirements.

But the changes failed to impress objectors.

Town Clerk Bob Gillis said it was a very technical amendment and the town council's "strong objections" on highways grounds still stood.

And Simon Williams, chairman of the St Andrew's Road Residents Association, put forward figures highlighting their concerns over high traffic volumes along the road.

Although Lidl had now agreed to provide a pedestrian refuge near the Travis Perkins entrance, which was an improvement, traffic movements along St Andrew's Road were predicted to exceed acceptable limits at peak school times. The needs of residents and children should be respected, he said.

Mr Williams said the amendments had failed to provide for a pedestrian refuge outside Lidl itself and no moves had been made to provide a central turning lane.

The revised plans also failed to address the loss of an important public view which would be blocked by the new Travis Perkins building on the site.

People had the right to the view and this was "an obscenity of an obstruction", he said.

** The town council has already lodged a long list of objections to Lidl's bid to come to Bridport.

They fear the cut-price supermarket would put many small traders out of business - robbing Bridport of its "viability and vitality" and turning the centre into a ghost town.

Lidl has applied to build its store next to builders' merchants Travis Perkins in St Andrew's Road.

The new supermarket will offer cut-price groceries and create some 35 jobs.

As part of a joint application, Travis Perkins would replace its headquarters with up to date buildings, financed by the money it gets from Lidl, adding some five extra jobs to its current 25-strong workforce.

Planners have also received a petition opposing the Lidl plan, signed by 557, from the St Andrew's Road Residents' Association.