Call to revive Tesco plan for centre of coastal town

AFORMER Brixham councillor has called for a fresh look at a town centre superstore proposal which split the community more than a decade ago.

Chris Lomas, who served on the town council and was a director of the organisation which came up with the scheme, says it is time to turn back to Tesco to solve Brixham’s problems.

His comments come after a proposal to build affordable housing on the site of the former town centre multi-storey car park.

The site, currently used as the town’s central car park, could accommodate around 70 new homes with no loss of parking, according to Torbay Council. A Government cash hand-out of £675,000 has been earmarked for the work.

The council says it could help with its well-publicised shortage of accommodation for local families, but Mr Lomas says the site is not suitable for homes, and should be offered back to supermarket firm Tesco, which had permission to build granted in the early 2000s and spent large sums preparing their plans before the financial crash brought an end to the proposal.

Mr Lomas said: “Young families are in dire need of housing, but Central Car Park is the wrong place.

“We know from past schemes that the ground under the tarmac is heavily polluted. It was the old harbour floor, then the Brixham Gas Works site.

“It would need huge excavations, with thousands of tonnes of poisoned spoil having to go to landfill, then replaced by new good topsoil, before new homes could have any sort of garden.”

Mr Lomas said the car park was often ‘full to bursting’, and the town could ill afford to lose the parking spaces. He went on: “Take away parking space and the town will be in trouble. Visitors will stay away from Torbay as Brixham is the only place in the bay with lots of easy access flat parking, close to shops, restaurants and harbour.”

Tesco’s plans for a superstore in the centre of Brixham were a hot issue in the town. They were backed by the Brixham 21 company made up of councillors and local people, set up to ‘promote the conservation, protection and improvement of the physical and natural environment’. Mr Lomas was a director of Brixham 21.

Opponents included a group known as BRATS – Brixham Residents Against Tesco Superstore.

Tesco planned a medium-sized store on the town centre car park as part of a multi-million pound transformation of Brixham led by Torbay Development Agency, with partners including the South West Regional Development Agency. The store would have had small shops on the ground floor and affordable homes above. There would also have been multi-storey car parking.

After the Tesco plan was finally dropped, four other food store operators said they were interested in filling the hole left behind. At a public meeting, the ‘overwhelming majority’ of around 200 people said they would support a regeneration scheme similar to the one dropped by Tesco as long as the store was smaller.

Mr Lomas said the Tesco scheme won architectural awards for its design, adding: “At present, Tesco is making substantial profits. Torbay Council’s first step could be to approach Tesco and see if the scheme could be revived. The project would make a marvellous centrepiece for Brixham.”