Concerned town councillors want to protect the livelihood of shops in Burnham-On-Sea’s town centre by restricting the sale of certain products at an expanding Brent Knoll garden centre.
Members of the Town Council’s planning applications committee met on Wednesday evening (October 15th) to consider in detail a long list of products that Sanders Garden World wants to sell if it is granted permission to expand its store by 35,000 feet.
Councillors are concerned about the overlap between the range of products at the garden centre conflicting with shops in the town centre.
Cllr Janet Keen hit out at proposals to introduce a new 557 sq metre area at the garden centre selling arts, crafts and hobby products. “It would be far too large and too broad a product range that could have a big impact on similar shops in Burnham,” she said. “It completely destroys the idea of garden centre.”
The committee also expressed concerns about plans for a 232 sq metre ‘farm foods’ area at the expanded store.
“No specific products are mentioned, so this could well include ‘supermarket items’ such as milk, eggs, cheese, bread and milk,” said Town Clerk Eileen Shaw during Wednesday’s meeting.
The committee also decided that a proposed ‘seasonal goods’ department should be re-named to cover just Christmas or it too could be “open-ended and able to sell too many products.”
During Wednesday’s meeting, Burnham’s Chamber of Trade also expressed its disappointment that Sedgemoor District Council had said it is happy with the retail assessment document prepared by Wyevale in support of the Garden World application. It states that the expansion would have little impact on town centre businesses.
However, the Chamber claimed in August that there are several inaccuracies within the document and Chairman Alex Turco said he has submitted a revised submission to the district council this week in which it is claimed that a quarter of Wyevale’s retail assessment document is inaccurate.
Burnham-On-Sea.com broke the news in March that the centre at Brent Knoll wants to extend its premises by 35,000 feet as part of a multi-million pound expansion programme. A formal planning application was registered by the store’s owners, Wyevale, in July and, if approved, the extension could generate over 100 new jobs. However, the Chamber of Trade estimates that the proposals could reduce town centre trade by £4 million of trade a year.
Wyevale, which bought the garden centre last year, plans to increase the size of the store’s covered building to 63,000 square feet and to leave the remainder of the outdoor sales area in its existing state. The proposal would also see the number of car parking spaces rise from 369 spaces to 411, and a new roundabout introduced.
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