New airfield warehouse plan supported (From Andover Advertiser)

New airfield warehouse plan supported

1:53pm Friday 5th February 2010

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REVISED plans for the former Andover airfield site were backed by councillors last week – although there was still opposition from surrounding parish councils.

Members of Test Valley Borough Council’s northern area planning committee heard that the main change from the previous Tesco ‘megashed’ was a much smaller distribution warehouse that would be occupied by the Co-op.

Parish councils in Monxton, Amport, Abbotts Ann and Thruxton all objected to the new proposals with worries about the type of jobs on offer being one of the main concerns.

Other concerns included a lack of working hour restrictions on units other than the Co-op warehouse and the amount of lorry traffic.

Cllr Katrina Saville, of Monxton Parish Council, said she was concerned about the predominance of warehousing on the site.

“I would have hoped that Goodman could provide the type of high quality business park that we know they can provide,” she told the committee. “The youth of Andover deserve better job opportunities.”

John Moon, of Abbotts Ann, said: “We believe that revisions to the Hundred Acre roundabout will encourage non-business traffic to travel through the village.” He called on Goodman to go back to the drawing board.

But Gerald Knight, spokesman for the developers, said that the safeguards applied to the original approved application remained intact and the Co-op had signed up to these commitments.

He also said that Goodman had accepted the idea of setting up a local monitoring committee and that if planning permission was granted then work on the Co-op site should start in May.

Cllr Phillip Lashbrook was unable to attend the meeting, but he stated in a letter that he had opposed the previous application but supported the new one.

“The Co-op may be good with food but I’m convinced they will be good for Andover,” he wrote.

The committee agreed to delegate the granting of planning permission to the head of planning.

The permission would be full for the Co-op site and outline for the rest of the development area.

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