Tesco Mereway expansion to come before planning committee

Councillors meeting to discuss the planned expansion of the Tesco store at Mereway are set to ask the supermarket giant to submit documents outlining what impact it would have on town centre businesses.
That is the recommendation of a report due to be discussed at next Tuesday's (March 8) Northampton Borough Council planning and regeneration meeting.
The planning committee does not have the power to decide the application - that job will fall to West Northamptonshire Development Corporation - but it can decide whether the development meets borough council planning policy or not.
The crux of the matter is whether Mereway constitutes a designated centre under the council's development plan.
The report, written by head of planning Susan Bridge, says it does not: 'This plan does not identify a District Centre at Mereway.
'In the accompanying evidence base Tesco at Mereway is identified as a stand alone out-of-centre foodstore'.
As a result the committee is recommended to ask Tesco to produce further documents outlining the potential impact of the store's expansion on the town centre.
The report also reveals that Tesco has already scaled down its plans, which would have seen the store's floorspace increase from '10,715 sq m to 14,979 sq m, a net additional gross internal floorspace of 4,264 sq m'.
An extra 37 sq m had also been planned for financial and professional services and 214 sq m for a community centre.
But now, writes Ms Bridge: 'The revised scheme, submitted in January 2011, proposed to reduce the size of the extension by 20 per cent from 2,720 sq m to 2,161 sq m and revised the split in floorspace between omparison and convenient goods.
'As a result of the revision only one of the two shop units originally proposed requires relocation'.