Object to Tesco Express moving into 144/146 Lwr Clapton Rd

Updated Mon 7th June

PHOTO & GRAPHICS: David White

 

Sunday 23rd May demonstration outside 144/146 Lower Clapton Road.

PHOTO: David White.

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http://www.noclaptontesco.org/

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The main point of resistance is the planning applications

• 2010/1039 – application to change delivery hours
• 2010/1041 – application to load and unload on the road to the front of the unit

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The main one to object to is 2010/1041

 Deadline 5th June

effectively extended to 23 June 

as the decision will not be made before then

(Stat cons exp date)   

  

NOTE: If you miss the deadline it is still worth filling in the online "comment" form (link below) as the planning dept is very good at considering residents views right up until the day the decision is made. This can be days or weeks (even months) after the official consultation period has ended (in this case 5th June). We will try and find out when the decision will be taken and let you know.

"Application dates, checks, meetings" etc at:
Details page for 2010/1041

  
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Please send you objections to Caroline Ozor, the Planning Officer in charge, in one of the following ways:

• By Email, to: caroline.ozor@hackney.gov.uk
• By Post, to: Caroline Ozor, Planning Officer, Hackney Council Planning Permission Dept, 1 Hillman Street, E8 1DY

or the easiest way to object is online

•  Hackney Council’s Website object/comment form (app 2010/1041) at this link

http://idox.hackney.gov.uk/WAM/createComment.do?action=CreateApplicationComment&applicationType=PLANNING&appNumber=2010/1041

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IMPORTANT: As with all planning application objections, objections will not be considered unless you give your name and contact details.
Petitions: will be treated as 1 objection if there is only signatures (without contact details). Whereas, a petition with 100 signatures, each with legible name and address or email address (ie contactable) will be treated as 100 objections.
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Background

You can use this or parts of it (see Traffic Issues) for your objection

These small supermarkets operate with minimal (sometimes no) internal

storage faciilty. The storage necessary for a fast-moving consumer goods

facility such as a Tesco supermarket is instead provided by delivery

vehicles, commonly small articulated heavy goods vehicles. In order to

keep the requisite level of stock in the shop a number of vehicle

deliveries are made every day with these vehicles. This is simply to

allow more of the floor area of the premises to be allocated to

commercial (rather than storage) use and thus improve the yield per

square metre in order to make the enterprise commercially viable. The

costs of the vehicles and drivers are part of the financial offset

against the premises cost. The externalities of additional pollution,

vehicle emissions and congestion caused by these vehicles are all of

course completely ignored in such commercial calculations and are simply

imposed on the rest of society, a significant part of them being applied

to the local community.

Tesco has a very bad reputation for its lack of concern about the

imposition on the community local to its small supermarket operations

(e.g. Tesco Metro and Tesco Express) and, depending on the frequency of

delivery there can be an almost permanent presence of a parked heavy

goods vehicle outside the premises. Although actual permanent presence

is rare, there are extreme conflicts. Essex Road is routinely reduced in

capacity near to the junction with Upper Street because of the presence

of delivery vehicles parked outside the premises during morning peak

hours, thus effectively eliminating the bus lane which is vital for

reasonable performance of the local heavily-used public transport system

at that critical point. Vehicles regularly arrive early, before the

permitted hours and park waiting for the delivery to be made. These

vehicles may or may not attract fines for their behaviour, but the

financial pressure on the commercial space within the premises is

clearly greater than the cost of servicing those fines - if they are

actually applied at all. A similar point occurs with the Tesco Express

premises in Finsbury Park, where the early morning deliveries by heavy

goods vehicles reduce the busy road to a single lane. The clear absence

of regard for others might be rendered in practice by the driver of such

a vehicle and although it would I am sure be routinely met with an

appalled apology from a company such as Tesco, it actually indicates the

incipent attitude towards the community expressed by Tesco. I could cite

other similar examples, but two is enough for the present purpose.

*144-146 Lower Clapton Road - Traffic issues*

The proposed premises in Lower Clapton Road is close to a major bus

stop, which serves some 60 buses an hour. Whatever formal arrangements

might be put in place, or agreements about delivery behaviour might be

obtained from the company, there is no reason to suggest that the

attitude of Tesco would be any different in this case than it is in any

of the others. Therefore I would expect there to be a continuing

conflict between the deliveries for the Tesco premises and the bus stop

and its users. Because of the manoeuvring requirements of buses and the

need for precision parking in order to facilitate access to buses by

older and disabled people, considerable space is required for buses at

bus stops (space that is rarely allocated) in order for them to operate

properly. This would suggest that delivery vehicles would not be able to

park outside the premises but further along the Lower Clapton Road

(presumably outside the Hackney Council neighbourhood housing offices).

The likelihood of delivery drivers actually using that space, with the

inconvenience of having to carry the deliveries across the footway and

intermediate vehicle crossover instead of the more convenient bus stop

is so small that in considering the proposal the transport planners

should cnsider that such disruption would actually be the norm.

The proposal is to use the parking bay outside the Palm 2 shop. This is

insufficient for any but the smallest delivery vehicles - the bay is

11.1 metres long - physically shorter than the length of a standard

13.4m delivery vehicle and the shorter vehicle used for some of these

deliveries (which is 10.35m long) would have great difficulty in

entering the bay as this is only slightly longer, making manoeuvring

into the space very difficult indeed, thus causing much disruption to

buses and traffic while the parking manoeuvre is undertaken. The likely

practical outcome would be that the drivers would choose the easier

option of parking nearer to, or at, the bus stop, thus adversely

affecting the access to the bus stop for both buses and passengers

during the loading periods. As noted above, if Planning condition 13 is

waived, we can expect that there would be several deliveries each day at

all times of day and night - even though the reson gven for the request

is to allow deliveries on Bank Holidays.

Lower Clapton Road is a Red Route. Although Red Routes do not exclude

provisions for parking or deliveries, the formal space provision in red

route guidance relates to kerb length and does not take into account the

manoeuvres required to access the legal delivery/parking bays. As

explained above, this would be a serious problem in this case as the

manoeuvre to enter the bay in such a way as to ensure that the parked

vehicle would not disrupt the bus access to the kerbside stop at

Millfields Road would be complex and almost certainly requiring the use

of the bus stop space for part of the entry manoeuvre. The required

reversing manoeuvre to undertake this would put pedestrians, especially

children, at considerable risk.
It is disingenuous of the applicant to imply that access to this loading bay is without manoeuvring problems and it is quite clear that such access could only be obtained with the proposed vehicles with extensive negative impacts on the traffic on the A107.

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What others are saying

May 25th

  

"Hackney Citizen" story
at
http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2010/05/25/clapton-residents-slam-tesco-plans/


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"My Hackney" story
at
http://www.myhackney.co.uk/news/clapton-residents-slam-tesco-plans


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"Clapton Pond Blog" story
at

http://davehill.typepad.com/claptonian/2010/05/tescotrouble.html

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"Hackney Hive" story

http://www.hackneyhive.co.uk/index/2010/05/clapton-residents-protest-new-tesco-plans/


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