CONVENIENCE STORE GOES AHEAD DESPITE RESIDENTS' FEARS FOR TRAFFIC CHAOS E-mail
After a long and bitter fight by councillors, retailers and residents of Peasedown St John, Bath and North East Somerset's  planning committee which met in Keynsham Town hall on Wednesday, voted reluctantly to allow a third convenience store, widely thought to be a Tesco mini shop, to be built on disused retail land at Peasedown St John.
The packed conference room heard many village representatives voice their concerns before the vote took place. These worries were well founded, according to one member of the voting panel, Cllr Jonathan Gay, who spoke for many when he criticised the arrangements suggested by the applicant for delivery lorries coming in and out of the village.
 
Cllr Sarah Bevan, who also spoke against this application, said:
 
"Our village needs facilities which enhance it physically and which enrich the lives of its inhabitants. Planning guidance and policies seem sometimes to be designed to ignore what is good for an area and its people, and this is one of those times."
 
Members of the panel were on the point of refusing the application, but were warned by Geoff Webber, a senior planning officer, that a refusal would almost certainly result in an appeal against the council by the applicant, which the council would lose, with high costs being awarded to the applicant, and that the £10,000 that the applicant had agreed to put towards traffic safety measures would also be lost.
 
Avon and Somerset police had lodged formed written objections with the planning office, and their concerns were also shared by church groups, who fear that another outlet for the sale of alcohol would worsen the problems those with addictions already have, and who are at the moment helped with their problems by the local Methodist foundation.
 
Clare Coles, local resident and Acting Chief Executive of the Co-operative Society, also spoke forcefully about the problems this new build would bring to the village. Her concerns included the displacement of residents' parking facilities, and the danger to the public from additional large lorries in the village.
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