Wait goes on for bakery decision amid obesity fears

ANXIOUS families will have to wait another month to find out if a new Greggs bakery will open in North Shields, amid fears over its impact on childhood obesity at a nearby school.

Plans to open a Greggs at the Collingwood Centre, just 400m from John Spence High School, were due to come before North Tyneside Council’s planning committee today and were recommended for approval, despite warnings from health chiefs.

However, a decision is now being deferred until the end of November at the earliest to give the giant bakery chain more time to address concerns over cooking odours.

Families, councillors, and North Tyneside’s director of public health have all urged planning bosses to reject Greggs’ application to move into a vacant unit, where KFC was denied permission to open a drive-through restaurant earlier this year.

They told the council that the Greggs would also be close to two other schools and a leisure centre, in a ward that already suffers from one of the highest rates of very overweight and obese children in the borough.

But the delay in making a decision on the plans centres around a separate objection from the council’s environmental health officer, who told the planning committee to refuse the application due to “insufficient information” on its extraction equipment.

The council’s planning office had said that the Greggs plan was acceptable for the site because – unlike KFC – it is not primarily a hot food takeaway.

The bakery has stated that only eight per cent of its takeaway sales are from hot food – as pasties and sausage rolls are not sold hot, but are “merely baked throughout the day and sold to the customer at whatever temperature they have cooled to from our counters”.

A petition with 73 signatures has been submitted against the development, citing concerns over childhood obesity, cooking smells, loss of residential amenity, vehicle noise, loss of visual amenity, litter and vermin problems.