NEWS April 10 2001

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 Tesco Drives Health Centre Out Of Pulborough

Three years ago, Tesco was refused plannign permission for a new store on a brownfield site in Pulborough, West Sussex, formerly occupied by a factory (APV Spiro Gills). Pulborough, a large village of a few thousand inhabitants, already has a Sainsbury’s and locals felt no need for further large shopping facilities. At the same time, the Pulborough Medical Group, composed of local GPs, was looking for a site for a new medical centre – urgently needed to take the pressure off overcrowded local doctors’ surgeries and save patients travelling to Chichester or Horsham for routine procedures.

After the supermarket planning decision was made, the GPs approached Tesco and appealed for the site to be sold for the health centre at an affordable price. Tesco refused, and three years later, the site remains unused, while time is running out for the doctors, whose funding is only secure until August. The alternative location is a site called Oddstones, which is not only greenfield but also also less convenient for villagers needing to reach the health centre, as there is no public transport. The obvious solution would appear to be compulsory purchase of the APV Spiro Gills site, but there are two problems with this: time is now too short unless funding can be extended, and Tesco is too powerful. Tellingly, a member of the Horsham District Council Planning and Development Committee, Councillor Peter Tobutt, was quoted in the West Sussex County Times as saying ‘We are not going to compulsorily purchase this. There is no way Tesco is going to budge on this and we are not big enough to fight Tesco’.

So much for the idea that planning committees are there to ensure the right things are built in the right places and the wrong things aren’t built at all. Apparently they are now obliged to kowtow to corporate dosh since they can’t afford good enough lawyers. No wonder Tesco is sitting on the site – they’re bound to get planning permission at some point, unless the locals kick up an enormous fuss. Let’s hope they do.