Your local Councillors have joined the criticised the Chair of B&NES Council’s planning committee for his decision not to allow the Lidl supermarket planning application to be heard in public at the planning committee meeting last week.

Lidl had applied to convert the former Herman Miller factory on Lower Bristol Road into a new supermarket.

This supermarket had the support of a large sector of the local community. This planning application should have gone to planning committee. As a major application, for a major development, there should have been an opportunity for the pros and cons to be debated in public. As it was, permission was refused on 16 April by the Planning Case Officer using ‘delegated authority’.

The Conservative Chair of the Committee should have thought about the public interest – this supermarket has a lot of support in the community.

This story and the subsequent planned appeal by Lidl was covered in the Bath Chronicle.