Carpet firm’s commercial gateway plan faces delay

File pic. Photo: Marco Paköeningrat/Wikimedia.

Roads bosses are seeking to put the brakes on a leading carpet retailer’s ambition to build an expanded commercial gateway into a market town, featuring distribution centre and showroom, industrial units, a 74-bedroom Travelodge hotel and a Starbucks outlet, on a popular greenfield site.

Responses over Calverts Carpets proposal for grazing farmland off York Road, Thirsk, that have been submitted to Hambleton District Council this week include a recommendation by National Highways that the application should not be approved until July 24, almost four months after the authority will cease to exist.

The move has been welcomed by campaigners who had expressed concern over the proposed development’s rapid progress since an application was lodged in November, particularly after the district authority decided time-consuming environmental studies to measure the impact of the major development on farmland were unnecessary.

In the coming week, Levelling Up minister Michael Gove is expected to rule on an appeal by campaigners over the council’s decision not to require the detailed studies.

In documents lodged last month, agents for Calvert Carpets said the firm wanted to locate its main distribution centre in Thirsk, which is at the heart of its chain of shops.

They said there were no alternative sites in the area and that the £16m investment would create 150 jobs during construction and 30 full-time equivalent jobs once the site was operational.

The agents also highlighted how the nearest Travelodge hotels to Thirsk are at Scotch Corner, Darlington, York, Scarborough or Harrogate, saying it would increase access to “a standard product that is attractive to visitors and so the proposal is important….”

While the proposal has met with fierce local opposition, local businessman Andrew Walker said he was supporting the scheme as it was on a good site to access the A19 and would boost the local economy.

However, many of the more than 100 objectors and those raising concerns, including Historic England, have said the proposed site is a well-used area of ecologically significant open land that contributes to the community’s wellbeing, and to the setting of the Thirsk and Sowerby Conservation Area by virtue of its open, medieval agricultural character.

In a letter to the council on Tuesday, National Highways said it wanted to see the results of studies, detailing potential road safety issues and over the potential volume of traffic which would visit the site as an identified “potential conflict” for vehicles could impact on the operation of the A19.

The Government firm highlighted how from 2015 to 2019 there were a number of collisions on the A19 southbound off-slip and the A170 southbound approach to the roundabout near the proposed development.

As well as objections from three parish councils saying the scheme is a major departure from the council’s recently completed Local Plan, countryside charity CPRE said there was sufficient room for the development at nearby Sowerby Gateway or an extension to Dalton Airfield Industrial Estate.

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