CEN article: Check out traffic chaos, protest urges
By Rachel Extance
Protesters say we may see scenes like this more often with a new Tesco.
CAMPAIGNERS fighting plans for a Tesco store on Cambridge’s Mill Road claim it will cause traffic chaos.
Members of the No Mill Road Tesco campaign group have been talking to people living near the Chesterton Tesco Express about what deliveries are like.
They say there is “constant noise” and large HGVs turn up four or five times a day. Residents living at the Mill Road end of Sedgwick Street also complain about large numbers of cars pulling up outside the shop and being parked illegally while people nip in for groceries.
Tesco want to extend the former Wilco building in Mill Road, install new signs and a cash machine to make an Express store.
The plans were to be decided last month but planning chiefs decided the report councillors would base their decision on did not go into enough detail.
The issue will now come before Cambridge City Council’s east area committee on March 6 but Tesco has decided to lodge an appeal with the planning inspectorate because the council has taken so long dealing with its application.
No To Mill Road Tesco say the city council states one of its five overall objectives in the Local Transport Plan is objectives ‘to minimise the adverse effects of transport on people and the environment’ and say their research shows Tesco’s application will do the opposite.
The campaigners quote a resident living opposite the Chesterton Tesco Express store who describes how lorries would turn up at 5.30am, despite deliveries not being allowed until 6am. The time has now been moved back to 7am but deliveries take place on weekends as well as Monday to Friday.
The resident said: “The reversing into place outside the shop involves the ‘bleeping’ and then crashing as the tail lift is put down. There is then constant noise as trolleys are pushed up and down the length of the lorries.
“There are a minimum of three deliveries per day and in actual fact there are more like four to five per day. This is because there is a separate bread delivery, then a milk delivery occurs, directly from separate companies, followed by Tesco’s own lorries.”
Public consultation on the applications runs until February 21, anyone who has already submitted their views does not need to do so again.
