Robinson's Brewery Site

I've been thinking a lot around this issue and have reduced the argument to what does Ulverston need most on this particular site which is central to the town:

A supermarket or housing with a high degree of affordable and small units suitable for older people.

I come down on the latter.

Several of the housing schemes that have been built recently provide poor housing even modern potential slums that are not being bought by our young people.

The housing at Taylor Court on Stanley Street instead of providing dwellings for local people is being operated as a series of Holiday Cottages called Laurel Court.

The nine units at the Gill end of Upper Brook Street are so crammed in and on to of each other that they will provide the modern day equivalent of the slums of the last century. Living rooms are placed on top of other peoples bedrooms with hardly a view out of many of the windows.

I think that most local young people would rate housing above a supermarket. To achieve an desirable result, I would have thought that the new development would need to be controlled by a housing association so that the units actually reach the local people and not people attracted to retiring here having lived elsewhere.

It could be hard to persuade the planning committee that a rejection of a supermarket will not be reversed by appeal with the force of money on the side of the bullying Supermarket Big Four.

John Harris writes of his experiences in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol which was recently in the news because of local opposition to Tesco.

When it comes to planning this is what can happen:

"The local stories that underlie this picture of endless expansion tend to follow much the same script. Once one of the Big Four has a town in its crosshairs, it can usually be assured of eventual success. If planning permission is initially refused, supermarkets will appeal, knowing that the legal costs to any local authority will be so high it will usually rather cave in – so, though councillors often take a stand, the local officers who fret about their budgets turn out to be more pliable. Just to tilt things the supermarkets' way even further, there are Section 106 agreements, named after the relevant part of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1990, whereby big corporations can swing the debate by offering to fund no end of sweeteners: libraries, public spaces, housing, even schools."

It's not going to be an easy fight to win,

See the web site "Keep Ulverston Special" for the latest news. They also have a petition to sign.

We have until August 19th to send in our views to the planning officer  Kate Lawson at K.Lawson@southlakeland.gov.uk