Last week many Glastonbury addresses received information from Tesco about their resubmitted plan. The information had a tear off and return card to voice agreement or concern about the proposal.
Strangely, the resubmitted plan is essentially the same as the old plan, just with a smaller building. The basic design has Tesco with its back to Wirral Park Road, with the carpark on the Morlands side. This means that all access traffic must use the two options of Street Road to Beckery New Road, or Dyehouse Lane to Beckery Road, to get to the site. As many people will know, Dyehouse Lane is too narrow for such regular access, which will mean that far greater pressure will be on the Street Road turning and traffic lights into the Morland Site.
In the last submission this detail was one of the number of important planning issues and one which led to the rejection of the plan by the Mendip Planning Officer and subsequently the Planning Inspectorate. It seems that the use of roads not designed for retail store access will add 750,000 road miles per year to the roads of Glastonbury, with resulting increased emissions, congestion, and costs.
So many will ask why Tesco situated its store this way and ignored advice to have access from Wirral Park Road, which is the most logical way to access the site. Could it be that there were assumptions on the part of Tesco and Avalon Plastics that any such anomalies would be ignored?
There are many practical issues to discuss, not least the fact that Tesco stores always lead to job losses rather than gains, and local high streets are always negatively impacted and in some cases become virtually empty!
Comments are welcome!
