Retail park plans held up
BUT SCHEME TO SOLVE PROBLEMS ‘WILL STILL GO AHEAD’
PLANS to alter the often clogged-up Great Northern Retail Park are still in the pipeline, it has been revealed.
It is almost five years since proposals to adjust the car park and access road were first raised following a host of traffic jams.
Shoppers are often stuck inside the car park for over an hour due to the bottle neck design of the exit road and the limited amount of vehicles that can get through the traffic lights out to Leeds Road.
Proposals to solve the traffic headache were unveiled in 2017 as part of a bid to open two new “pod” restaurants on part of the car park close to the canal.
The car park will be re-designed to have two exit lanes along the edge bordering the canal, all the way to the lights.
The entrance road will be altered slightly to allow traffic a second access to the spaces adjacent to the
TUI Holiday Superstore and TK Maxx.
A total of 103 parking spaces will be lost to the changes, which were given the green light by Kirklees Council later in 2017.
But almost three years on and no work has commenced.
Now a letter from the retail park’s owner, BAE Systems Pension Fund Trustees, confirms it still intends to implement the plan.
It says progress has been “frustrated by the Covid 19 situation” but they are working on starting the development.
But Kirklees Council has suggested the landlords will struggle to begin the upgrade before the time limit on their planning permission expires on October 12.
In a bid to encourage the development at the popular shopping park to go ahead, planning officials have allowed BAE to alter three planning conditions set by the council.
In a document giving them the go ahead, a planning official says: “... officers accept that a commencement within four months is now unlikely, without factoring in additional delays related to the (coronavirus) lockdown.”
They have agreed to relax the conditions, one of which is to ensure the wall of the adjacent Huddersfield Broad Canal did not collapse during construction, in a bid to fast-track the work.
BAE has been approached for comment.