Out-of-town shopping plans ‘put Leamington town centre under threat’

This is the view of the town’s Chamber of Trade in response to two major applications for retail outlets at the former Ford Foundry site and at Leamington Shopping Park off Europa Way.

Trilogy, which bought the former Ford site and developed the recently opened Morrisons supermarket, wants to bring a new homestore to the site off Old Warwick Road - where it was originally going to build offices and a hotel.

And RPS Architects has put forward a proposal to build three new retail units to replace a garden centre which sat next to the former Focus store near Sainsbury’s in Leamington Shopping Park.

But, while the two proposals are being put to public consultation before the council’s planning committee makes decisions on whether they should go ahead, Parminder Birdi, chairman of the town’s Chamber of Trade, warned: “The chamber is very concerned about the real possibility of further out-of-town shopping developments which can only dilute the attractions of the town centre. The chamber would support plans designed to discourage Leamington shoppers from going to other nearby towns to do their shopping and to attract shoppers to Leamington town centre.

“Businesses in Leamington are spending over £300,000 a year in promoting town centre offer. It is time for our local authorities to put resource and policies in place to improve access to the town centre, make it easier to park and encourage suitable town centre developments to keep our town centre an attractive place for shoppers, workers and residents alike.”

Trilogy’s plan for the former Ford site has already prompted Warwick District Council’s deputy chief executive Bill Hunt to voice his concerns that the site would have a “detrimental impact on the town centre”. Speaking in November, he said the proposal did not conform with Trilogy’s approved development brief which sought to use the site for offices, “which would bring jobs and other opportunities to the area”.

But Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners, which prepared a planning document for Trilogy, says in its application that the homestore - which would sell large electrical goods, MP3 players, cameras, phones and software, furniture, lighting, carpets, textiles, cooking and dining accessories and other home furnishing items - would enable Leamington to compete with Solihull and Coventry for its retail offering.

The application states: “There is a clear quantitative need for additional comparison retail development across the district and in Leamington itself.”

Dismissing the Clarendon Arcade project for Chandos Street, which was refused planning permission in 2011, as unlikely to materialise, the firm states: “Only a small sector of Leamington’s town centre is likely to experience a negative trading impact.”