the No Mill Road Tesco Campaign

“The location of the corner in relationship to the premises will be the same no matter what type of A1 business occupied the premises; it could not, in my opinion, be demonstrated that a specific named occupier would be better or worse than any other. The proposal is not of sufficient size to warrant a Traffic Assessment. To vary our basis of assessment to address a single named user would be inconsistent and unjustifiable“

(Highway Authority, quoted in Case Officer’s Report to East Area Committee 17/1/08)

We think this is patently untrue. When considering an application which would inevitably increase traffic and congestion on the road which is the County Council’s second highest road safety priority, we believe it is not merely justifiable to consider the impact of a named user, but that it is essential.

Different A1 businesses will inevitably generate different levels of road use and deliveries. A convenience store will, de facto, require more frequent deliveries than a shop selling hearing aids or cycle parts. Tesco, with its famous Just In Time policy, will inevitably generate more deliveries than any other supermarket.

Tesco’s own figures estimate 30 deliveries a week. Our own findings, from monitoring actual deliveries to the Cherry Hinton Tesco Express, suggest this figure is more likely to be closer to 70 than 30. By way of contrast, these are some of the current delivery statistics from other A1 businesses on Mill Road: