Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised by last week’s re-submission of the 39 West Street ‘Dominos Pizza’ takeaway planning application by Geo. & R. Carrell Properties Ltd. The cynical timing of this application follows an approach often used with contentious applications, sneaking them in during the holiday period when the public are normally distracted.
Once again, this application has been recorded by HBC as ‘suitable for delegated decision’ by a planning department who are themselves already distracted by a notable lack of management. Fortunately, the St Faith’s Ward Councillors have responded quickly to our request for support and the application has been ‘red-carded’ to ensure that it will be debated in public by the Development Management Committee in the new year.
Little, if anything, has changed with the re-application, other than the submission of a 39 page ‘Technical Traffic Note’ which in our view presents little of substance. Stripping away the largely irrelevant content including three pages in Welsh, we find a ‘detailed’ survey of West Street car parking during a three and a half hour period on a single Friday evening in November. This primarily relates to the spaces occupied by 6 vehicles in the yellow box in the image above. We are already monitoring use of the car parking over a more representative timescale.
Apart from the obvious issues of parking, both for delivery drivers at the rear of the site and for customer collections, we have a serious concern about the impact on traffic in Park Road South. The delivery drivers will be turning into and out of the site using the entrance between Rothman’s Accountants and Ian’s hairdresser, marked by the double yellow arrow in the image. Those of us who use Park Road South regularly will be aware of the impact of traffic turning into and out of Burger King and Bulbeck Road and if this application is approved, then the Dominos delivery traffic will significantly add to that traffic chaos.
The six ward Councillors on the Development Management Committee on October 18th rejected the original application unanimously and given that there is no material change to this re-application we should expect the same result.
However: Do not assume that because you may have objected to the previous application, you need do nothing. Previous comments will not be considered and new objections must be raised. If you agree with us that this re-submitted application should be refused, please take the time to submit an objection by taking this link. Comments must be received by Wednesday 2nd January.
If you’re at a loss for words, feel free to take a look at our own response by taking this link.
To view a summary of all previous articles on this website relating to the applications submitted by Carrells for 39 West Street, please take this link.
Havant Civic Society 
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