Controversial convenience store application in Kendal rejected

A hugely controversial application for a convenience store in Kendal has been refused permission by the district council.

The plan for a site at the junction of Appleby Road and Shap Road attracted a total of 728 objections.

Traffic, flooding, parking and litter were among the topics raised by opponents of the scheme.

The plans were scrutinised and turned down by a meeting of the district council’s planning committee.

The convenience store would have taken land from the car park of the Duke of Cumberland and would have seen the pub’s beer garden ‘redesigned’.

Josh Macaulay, who runs the pub with business partner Chris Moss, spoke at the planning committee meeting and accused applicant Punch Partnerships Ltd (PML) of ‘profiteering from our community’.

The site was previously earmarked for a Co-op, but Mr Macaulay said the company had pulled out.

“If it is granted, it will now be a One Stop shop,” he said.

He also warned that granting of the application would see the Duke of Cumberland cease to exist in its current form, saying the car park and beer garden made the pub viable.

“We’d lose both,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be profitable, and we’d strip the site and leave.”

County councillor Shirley Evans, who represents Kendal Nether and lives near to the proposed development, felt there were other, preferable locations for the convenience store in Kendal.

“The last few years have created huge challenges for our town centre, where there are plenty of suitable sites,” she told the planning committee.

She stressed that the proposed location for the store was ‘one of the most complex and busiest junctions in Kendal’.

“Hundreds of Queen Katherine School pupils cycle and walk past every day,” she said.

“Please don’t put them at more risk.”

She also expressed concern over the risk of flooding.

“Water displaced by this building will have to go somewhere,” she said.

A spokesman for Punch Taverns, in a statement read out at the meeting, said the amount of parking proposed for the site ‘complies with the council’s adopted standards’.

The spokesman said vacant town centre premises that had been identified were ‘not suited to a convenience store’. Among the identified issues was the lack of a dedicated car park for customers.

The application was turned down for three reasons.

• The amended town centre test fails to demonstrate sufficient flexibility and discounts a number of sequentially preferable sites within the town centre
• The amended flood risk sequential test discounts a number of sequentially preferable sites within the town centre that are at lower risk of flooding
• A shortfall in parking provision