Margaret Griffiths
I have sat on the fence for over a year wanting to believe that the predicted
benefits of this retail park could be realised and that it would benefit the
people of Rhondda Cynon and Taff.
But now I too have got to speak against this development.
Planning applications of this sort are like looking into a crystal ball.
As I travel around the UK
and see chaos caused by misjudged developments, I remind myself that in every
case there was an expert report saying
that everything would be all right on the night.
This proposal for a new town was conceived 10 or more years ago and life
has moved on. There is no extra demand in our economy. But if demand shifts this
retail park will kill
Pontypridd,
Porth
Tonypandy,
Tonyrefail
Aberdare,
Talbot Green,
Pontyclun
Phase 1
If people are going to transfer their shopping from existing retail
centres they must travel and this plan does not address the serious highway
infrastructure problems that we have now and will become worse.
I accept that the new supermarket is not a big issue for the roads
although I think it will kill all the small supermarkets in Talbot Green and
Pontyclun.
Shoppers will move from the existing Tesco and the road network will not
be adversely affected.
We have an LDP objective that we encourage walking and cycling instead of
car use. But there is no provision for
walking from the Talbot Green retail park, to the new retail park. This will be
a very strange new town in which a shopper wishing to visit Marks and Spencer
and Boots and Sainsbury will need to travel half a mile by car.
So we will double the amount of traffic on the road as shoppers drive between one retail park and another.
The effect is chaos .
Phase 2
In Phase Two we will not just be shifting shoppers around the Talbot Green
area. The applicant states that 40% of shoppers would previously have shopped
in Cardiff and
10% in Pontypridd. These shoppers will be new to the roads of Talbot Green and
will add substantially to the current congestion.
The applicant states that 30% of the shoppers will travel from the south
and through the village
of Pontyclun. The density
of traffic on Brynsadler Hill is now so bad that the Post Office has refused to
deliver post to the residents on the east side because of the danger to their
staff, from traffic. I believe there is no other street in south Wales
which is suffering in the same way.
The developer is offering £150,000 to mitigate the effects of the extra
traffic through Pontyclun. I know I should be grateful; but I have not seen one
suggestion of how this money could actually be used to reduce the density of
traffic, allow the post to be delivered, allow the sick to get to hospital on
time. Nor is this enough
Looking outside of Pontyclun itself, have you travelled at any time between
2.30 and 6.30 on the A4119 travelling northwards from the M4 to get onto the
road to the Rhondda or the road to Pontypridd.
You sit in your car and crawl from the time you leave the motorway till
you get past the roundabout where the A473 and the A4119 cross.
The original transport assessment provided by the developer, notes that our own strategic transport
infrastructure needs study identifies that we need a grade separated junction
as a long term solution in order to mitigate the effects of additional traffic a flyover at the cost of
approximately £19 million pounds.
There is a total of £4 million on the table with £2.5 million of this for
this junction.
It is a requirement of
our LDP paragraph 4.75 that we “ensure
that the provision of highways improvements necessary to deliver allocated
sites and to ensure that the growth proposed by the LDP has no adverse impact
on the highway network”
This is an important provision because gridlock on the A4119 and A473,
will be bad for our local economy, in Talbot Green and the Rhondda.
Firms will move out of Coed Cae
Lane and Llantrisant Business
Parks simply because they
cannot get their goods to the motorway. The Vale of Glamorgan are working with
the new owners of the Bosch site at Miskin to develop a distribution centre on
the motorway. So our ambition to attract new business further up the Rhondda along the A4119 will be undermined by this retail
park
In my view it is not a price worth paying and it is contrary to the
commitment in our LDP that development should not have an adverse effect on the
highways network.
I would however, welcome a new application for a Sainsbury store resited
to face onto Cowbridge Road.
Because I believe that there is no evidenced need for other retail shops
I believe that Sainsbury’s should be located on the western side of the site,
the brown field site and facing sympathetically onto Cowbridge Road.
1. We would not be using a green field
site.
2. We would enable the rest of the brown
field site to be developed for retail if the need arises far into the future,
for offices, industry or for housing.
To conclude I cannot recommend that you support this application and I don’t believe that an appeal will be
successful.
Paul Griffiths
I speak in part as a
representative of the village
of Pontyclun. If there is
any Nimby sentiment in Pontyclun I have not found it and I am not speaking for
it.
Pontyclun has doubled in
size in 1991. Pontyclun stands alongside one of South Wales most successful and
rapidly growing business parks at Coed Cae Lane – which Geraint Hopkins always
reminds me is in his ward. The people have Pontyclun have always supported this
rapid growth.
The application is to
develop two former factory sites – Purolite and Staedler. I have met no-one who
does not want these sites developed for new economic activity. About a third of
the development is on the green field of the Pant Marsh.
As I have developed a
view on this application I have had in mind two questions:
1. Is this application
consistent with the Local Development Plan?
2. What does this
application do for jobs and the RCT economy?
Paragraph 4.68 of the LDP
states that
“Proposals for edge of
town /out of town retail developments will be assessed in accordance with
guidance contained in Planning Policy Wales”
That guidance states “In
deciding whether to identify sites for retail and leisure developments, local
planning authorities should in the first instance consider whether there is
a need for additional provision for these uses”.
The Planning Inspector
who reviewed the LDP drew particular attention to this requirement.
I think there is a need
for a new food based supermarket on this site. Everyone knows that Tesco at Talbot Green is over trading and that there is sufficient local demand for a
second supermarket.
My problem is with the
application for a new Department store and 40 other multiple stores. Let there
be no doubt: this is a massive out-of-town retail park designed to draw in car
based customers from across the region.
Look at the illustration
in Appendix E and ask yourself if this is a town centre in any sense that
anyone would recognise. Look at page 35 of the report: the Design Council is
requiring you to assess whether this application is a town centre or an out-of
town retail park. Look at page 97 and there is only one answer – it is a retail
park, requiring car access and occupying private space which will exclude
citizens who merely want a town centre experience.
The LDP requires that we ensure
that such a development is in response to additional need – this means that it is
responding to extra pounds being spent in shops.
I have spent the last
year reading report after report on retailing in the UK. You will not be surprised to
hear that each year as the recession continues we spend less in shops.
There is however
something more long term happening. Most of the retail appraisals supporting
this application were done in 2007 when the volume of internet sales was not
even recorded. In the last year 15% of all retail sales were on the internet.
By 2016 it is estimated that a quarter of all retail sales will be on the
internet. This is the reason that so many firms are leaving the Retail Parks-
HMV, Jessops, Comet, JJB, Clinton Cards, Game Group, Aquascutum, Blacks,
Habitat – the list goes on and on. Peacocks are losing one third of their
stores. Even the most successful firms like John Lewis are reducing their staff
in stores and re-focussing on internet sales.
I predict that out-of
town retail parks will become the derelict canals of the 21st
century.. Just as the railway replaced the canal, the internet is replacing
out-of-town shopping. Over the next few decades retail parks will fade into redundant
lumps of derelict concrete. I believe that we are being asked to give a
planning consent to an out-dated canal.
Does it matter? You might
think that all the risk is with the developer and not with the local authority.
But there is a risk. If we allow the expansion of this retail site in the context
of a declining market, and it succeeds, it can only do so by transferring trade
from existing retail centres to this one – taking trade from Talbot Green, from
Tonypandy, from Pontypridd, from Tonyrefail, from Llanharan and every other
town centre in the County Borough. This is the important point that is being
made by the RCT Chambers of Trade and Commerce.
I must say that the officers’
report before you is far too relaxed about the effect on other centres in RCT. The
report predicts that trade in Talbot
Green will fall by 10% and trade in Pontypridd by 6% and then says that this is
not significant. I have to ask what world are we living in? Retail margins are
tiny – a further fall of 6 or 10% in trade will kill of a large proportion of
the current retailers in these towns. Read the companies’ annual reports and
you will not come to the same conclusion as this officer report.
The applicant claims that
the development will create 1900 jobs. The applicant is clever enough to know
that this cannot be true. There may be 1900 jobs on this site but as there is
no increase in spending in shops every one of these jobs must come from other
shops. The net increase in jobs must be zero.
You may think that taking
trade and jobs from Cardiff
is a good thing. But let’s just think that through. As our LDP says, our future
economic success requires that we attract and develop high quality
manufacturing and knowledge based industries. We will only do that if we sit
along side a successful city centre in Cardiff.
If we turn SE Wales into an American doughnut
– a region without a city centre, we will all go down the pan. Over 20,000
people commute from RCT into Cardiff
each day. If a Debenhams worker commuting from Abercynon or Pontypridd is asked
to commute to Pontyclun instead of Cardiff,
will that be progress?
In fact, it is not the
case that Cardiff
retailing is sucking retail capacity out of RCT. Just over 20% of the RCT
economy is currently devoted to retailing. That figure is no higher in Cardiff.
I am convinced that there
is a successful future for retailing in RCT, despite the inevitable switch to
the internet. But this requires that we focus on our existing town centres and
not on out-of-date retail parks. We support our existing town centres to focus
on the sort of face-to-face services that the internet cannot provide. Our High
Streets will need to change and innovate; but they can have a future. In
contrast out-of town retail parks have no future.
A new supermarket needs
to be developed but currently it is in the wrong place. It is on the Greenfield at the back of
the site with every chance that in twenty years time it will still be
surrounded by derelict factory sites.
I would welcome a revised
application which brings the supermarket forward on to the old Purolite site,
alongside the existing Leekes site. The vacant space at the back of the site
should then be made available in a flexible manner as the need develops – it
may be for extra retail, it might be for distribution, it might be for other
economic activity.
I have become convinced
that you should turn down this application in its current form. The application
is contrary to our LDP because it does not meet any additional retail need and
cannot therefore create any new jobs. It would not succeed on appeal.
No comments:
Post a Comment