Local councillors have said this week that ‘common sense’ should have prevailed when it came to determining an application for a new convenience store to be situated on a main route into Tenby.

An application for a new premises licence for a proposed Co-op store on The Green in Tenby was approved by members of Pembrokeshire County Council’s licensing sub-committee last week, who gave the thumbs up to a variation of the hours of operation, from 6 am to 11 pm daily.

Members of Tenby Town Council reiterated their concerns this week about the development, feeling that it will lead to an increase in traffic congestion on one of the main roads into the resort, after correspondence from the county council’s engineering development control officer, Stephen Benger, came before them at their meeting on Tuesday night.

“It appears that these additional hours are in part to allow deliveries during store opening hours when the store is quieter,” he explained.

“The additional hours being considered, would normally be expected to be quieter times at the store and on the local highway network, so a substantial increase in traffic would not be expected,” continued Mr. Benger.

The town clerk, Mr. Andrew Davies, told members that the original application granted for the site back in 2013, approved a ‘flexible retail outlet’ and therefore the county council’s highways department had already established traffic movements in and out of the site.

“When the plan was presented to us at the time, though, it was for business starter units, and proposals for a supermarket store were not indicated at all,” commented Clr. Laurence Blackhall.

“What this all comes back to though is the breadth of planning conditions, in that developers can do something completely different unless specific restrictions are placed on a development.

“We really need to have a meeting with the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority on planning issues, urgently,” he continued.

Clr. Trevor Hallett was worried that the authorities hadn’t taken into account that this was a residential area, while Clr. Will Rossiter felt that it could prove to be a dangerous situation with extra traffic in that area, and he didn’t see how PCC’s highways department could have approved the application.

“Common sense should have prevailed with the county council and National Park, as they know that a high end supermarket in that location is going to cause problems traffic-wise,” said Clr. Mrs. Christine Brown.

“They don’t live in Tenby, so they can’t see what we see,” she added.

The Mayor, Clr. Paul Rapi, asked for a further letter to be written to the authorities with the town council’s views.

“I’d like to say to them good luck, we have warned you, and if problems arise in that area, then they can sort it out!” he said.

Footnote: Clr. Dr. Peter Easy told his colleagues that he had recently attended a ‘Planning Aid Wales’ training workshop for community and town councillors and other community representatives held at Haverforwest.

Commissioned by the Welsh Government to support imminent changes to the planning system, the workshop’s aim was to explain how planning works and the changes to be introduced by the Planning (Wales) Bill later this year.

Local authority planning officers were on hand to explore how local communities can build stronger relationships with their planning authority, including preparation of ‘Place Plans’, which will have the status of supplementary planning guidance.

“A Tenby ‘Place Plan’ might be an idea worth following, so we can feed ideas of what the town does and doesn’t want,” Clr. Dr. Easy told his colleagues.

“It would provide local communities and town councils the chance to be more proactive and wouldn’t it be nice if Tenby was one of the first towns in the county to get on board and take up the ‘Place Plan’ idea,” he said, with Clr. Blackhall agreeing, suggesting that the town council write to Planning Aid Wales and the local authorities to say that the town council was interested in the proposal.