Plans by Lidl to expand its delivery hours to weekends and Bank Holidays at its store in Burnham-On-Sea’s Oxford Street have been opposed this week.
As Burnham-On-Sea.com first reported, the supermarket wants to introduce deliveries on Sundays and Bank Holidays between the hours of 7am until 8pm.
But the plans have drawn opposition from town councillors during their planning committee meeting on Wednesday night (May 22nd).
Cllr Nick Tolley said: “I’m firmly against this. There are a lot of houses adjacent to this store and many residents have written in and expressed their concern about noise.”
Cllr Sue Harvey, Cllr Andy Brewer and Cllr Louise Parkin also spoke out about the noise concerns during the meeting.
Councillors voted to object against the plans “in order to protect the local amenity of local residents,” deciding delivery hours of 9am-6pm for Bank Holidays and Sundays.
When the store originally won planning approval in 2003, Burnham-On-Sea.com reported that the council had placed a condition on Lidl that “there shall be no service deliveries to the site after 9pm or before 7.30am Monday to Saturday and no service deliveries on Sundays to protect the amenity of nearby properties.”
However, the store is now seeking to change that condition in order to expand delivery hours. Lidl says this will “allow greater availability to customers, fewer HGVs during peak hours, and maximise company efficiency.”
Rachel Brady-Hooper of Lidl says: “The proposal will allow for minimal disruption to the store during trading hours on both Sundays, Mondays and Bank Holidays, resulting in maximum customer service during these times.”
“Furthermore, this proposal would result in less need for HGVs to travel during busy times; reducing impact on traffic congestion and carbon emissions from sitting in traffic.”
She adds that Lidl “strongly believes that a more generous delivery window will have a very minimal impact on the nearby residents, as the delivery bay is adjoined either side by the store.”
“Those houses that do not benefit from the building sheltering the delivery bay, benefit from a distance of over 36 meters from the bay; mitigating noise impact. Finally, our HGVs conduct deliveries into the store of a maximum of twice a day. HGVs turn their engines off whilst making deliveries, ensuring that there is no noise from air conditioning units. Deliveries on average take fifteen minutes to complete.”
“It has been demonstrated that the proposed delivery hour extension will allow the Lidl store to function more efficiently a benefit will be provided to our customers, our store colleagues and to the local highways.”
Comments are welcome by Sedgemoor District Council’s planning department until June 7th, 2019. The planning application reference number is 11/19/00048.
