Lidl are Coming to Nailsea, Hip Hip . . . Boooooooo?

“Welcome to Nailsea, Free Parking”

That’s what the signs into town used to read. It always seemed to me to be an odd sort of thing to advertise, as if Nailsea didn’t have anything else going for it. Given that the newer signs proudly announce that a decade ago we were placed in Britain in Bloom, that may well be the case. But free parking was a draw and it still is. Given that Nailsea has almost 1,000 free spaces available maybe that’s no surprise. It’s arguably one reason the town centre is still relatively vibrant, at least in comparison to many in the area.

So when Lidl announced last year that they were planning on coming to Nailsea and would build their store on one of the town's main car parks thereby reducing its capacity by more than 80 spaces, the outrage and horror was palpable. They ran an ‘informal public consultation event’ that, despite being during a working day, attracted over 700 locals, many of whom expressed their concerns to such an extent that Lidl went and revised their plans. This time they proposed a smaller store and the loss of only 40 spaces.

When the public consultation opened the flood of objections was overwhelming and they are still coming in. Clearly surprised by the outpouring of public vitriol the unprecedented move was taken by Lidl and Ellandi, the current owners of the car park and Crown Glass Shopping Place (aka "the precinct"), to agree to an event where they could present their case and take questions from local residents. I expected fireworks and I wasn’t disappointed.

The event began at 7.15pm but doors opened at 6.30. I arrived at just after this time and there was already a decent turnout and people were pouring in. By the time it all started there was standing room only in a room set out for about 200.

On the stage we had Clare Hunt, Chair for Nailsea Town Council. Next to her was James Tonkin, Chair of the Planning and Environment Committee and Chair for the evening’s events. Beside him were ‘the enemy’ as a gentleman behind me called them: James Mitchell from Lidl and Mark Robinson from Ellandi. Both were wearing shirts without ties and in my desire to dislike them I thought they looked incredibly ‘corporate’. I could almost imagine them beforehand reminding each other the name of the town because, well, all these satellite towns look the same, don’t they?

The plan was to allow Ellandi and then Lidl the opportunity to present their case before questions were taken from the floor. Councillor Hunt explained that there were other members of the council in attendance and that the discussion would inform their decision on whether to recommend the application or not. She clarified that while the council can comment on applications the final decision would be made by North Somerset Council.

First up was Mark Robinson. He explained that he had founded Ellandi with a business partner and they now had 19 community shopping centres around the country. He couldn’t have been much older than late 30s/early 40s and he had 19 shopping centres – what am I doing with my life?! That momentary lapse of despair over, I listened as he provided a brief history of Crown Glass Shopping Centre, acknowledging at the same time that he was speaking to an audience who knew more about that topic than he. The most pertinent part was how he acquired the site – it had been bought by a company at the very point the bubble burst in the property market who subsequently went bankrupt and his company was able to buy it from the receivers at a knock-down price. The previous owners had bought the land with the intention of building a Sainsbury’s superstore on the car park site and when Ellandi purchased it, they did so with the intention of trying to follow through on those plans. He explained that they were heavily invested in improving the site, that they were not ‘fly by night’ (a phrase he used several times) and they have worked hard to entice and retain retailers both large and small to open businesses in the town centre.

Onto the topic at hand: the proposal to build a Lidl store. Mr Robinson explained that they want any growth to be focused in the town centre – anything that draws commercial activity away from that will be a bad thing. He emphasised that the majority of businesses in the town centre were for the proposal. In other words there are some who object and it would be interesting to see a breakdown between national retailers and the independent stores as to their level of support and the level of competition they feel Lidl would represent. However, later on in the evening it was re-emphasised that he would not be supporting anything that he thought would harm the economic viability of the town centre as a whole. While I believe that, I feel it may be, despite all his experience, rather naïve to think that the presence of a budget supermarket known for its growing popularity among the increasingly financially stretched middle class (a demographic which typifies Nailsea to a large extent) would not harm other businesses in its proximity.

On the off-chance there’s anyone who isn’t local reading this (why, for goodness sake, why subject yourself to this?!), the car park is not only used for accessing the shopping precinct but it is also the closest car park to the library and, most pertinently, it is right next door to one of, if not the, largest health centre in Nailsea, a centre that has expanded significantly and now has a large pharmacy and many different clinics in addition to the standard GPs and nurses. A lot of concern has been over the parking access for the health centre and when Mr Mitchell explained that there will be ‘enhanced parking’ for it there was chuckling from the crowd followed by a heckler calling out ‘you’re talking a load of rubbish’ which was greeted with claps and cries of agreement. He appeared rather deflated after this and, having lost his flow, requested simply that he be treated with respect and sat down, seemingly defeated.

Tough crowd!

Next up was James Mitchell. Having seen the reaction his compatriot had received he began by acknowledging the strength of feeling and conceded that Lidl had misjudged that strength. He admitted that the numbers that attended the event last year had been almost unprecedented in his experience and it had been a ‘difficult but enlightening day’ that led to a rethink of their plans, requiring an extended deadline for their application so that they had sufficient time to improve it. Given the problems with the revised plans I feel that time was not enough.

After some explanation of how they had revised their plans he then dropped the proverbial bombshell. They are looking into purchasing and revamping the Station Road car park! The proposal is still in the early stages but they believe that with a change of layout they would be able to increase the number of spaces from its current allotment of 262 to 302, an addition of 40 spaces which, when combined with the proposed changes to the Stockway South car park, would result in a net loss of a mere 7 spaces overall. He believed that the ‘benefits of the application outweigh this nominal loss’. He ended by reiterating that Lidl had listened, and were continuing to listen, to the reaction of locals and were trying to adapt in response.

To editorialise briefly, I have mixed feelings about this proposal. On the one hand the Station Road car park is in need of investment and if Lidl were willing to take it on then it can only be a good thing. However, the sudden announcement of it felt a little cynical. I was reminded of court-room melodramas where the seemingly-defeated lawyer would suddenly announce that the murdered person wasn’t really murdered but was still alive and duh duh duuuuuh, was here today to explain how it was all a frame-up. Or something. It just felt a little too good to be true. Words are cheap, especially when you need as many as possible to get you through a difficult evening with a hostile crowd.

The pros and cons of their proposal in light of this dramatic revelation were still ringing in my ears as the floor was opened to questions. Or should I say comments with maybe a question thrown in for good measure.

I’m going to be incredibly broad in my sweeping generalisations here and abuse stereotypes to an unseemly degree but it seems that those well-endowed in years, when convinced of their rightness, have an incredible ability to drone on. We had a relatively short Q&A period available to us yet question after question was essentially ‘how dare you take our car parking spaces?!’. I saw the eyes of ‘the enemy’ roll on several occasions, something that would be a terrible PR faux pas in most circumstances but one I’m willing to overlook for the simple reason that my eyes were rolling too. There were people who had clearly prepared what they were going to say and even if their questions had been addressed in the presentations, even if someone had just asked the same question, they were damned if they weren’t going to get their five minutes to excoriate these people for their temerity to build on a beloved car park. It got to the point where people weren’t even bothering with questions or, if they were, they were clearly rhetorical, and I began to feel quite sorry for the pair of men confronted with the righteous anger of the aggrieved.

Despite this, good points were raised and if anger wasn’t abated it was because the responses from Mr Mitchell were surprisingly pathetic. A lot of the more justified concern was surrounding the health centre. Lidl want a two hour maximum stay in keeping with the recently renovated Waitrose car park and a reduction from the three the car park currently allows. Many people felt that this would not allow sufficient time for some people visiting the health centre and while Mr Mitchell agreed that patients would be allowed more time, he had no idea how that would be fairly implemented. The loss of disabled parking spaces, particularly ones close to the health centre, was another cause for concern. He admitted they hadn’t given this sufficient consideration and will do so.

After the evening was officially closed I went and spoke to Mr Mitchell to ask a question that hadn’t been asked, despite it being a question many I’ve spoken to have raised – the anger over losing parking spaces seemed to let people lose sight of the bigger picture – that of alternative sites. Ellandi reiterated throughout the evening that they want Lidl to be in the town centre because it adds ‘vibrancy’ and draws people in rather than persuading them to shop further afield. The implication was that there was no option but to put Lidl on a car park because there was no other suitable site around. Yet there are two vacant sites of, to many residents’ eyes, suitable size and much more agreeable location. Indeed, many people begin their comments on the proposals by saying ‘I don’t object to Lidl coming to Nailsea, but the car park is the wrong place for them’. They then go on to ask why they don’t build on either the former Weston College site which has been empty for something like five years now (and is next door to the carpark) or the police station which is just across the road and seems ideal.

Mr Mitchell was good enough to offer explanations – the Weston College site was too small for even their smallest store. The police station site is also too small, marginally so was the impression I got (false or not, I don’t know) and it also came under different planning classification, though how much of an issue that is I don’t know as I don’t know anything about planning classifications. It may be a major sticking point or it may be a wonderful response designed to fob off an annoyingly inquisitive individual.

The thing that struck me through all of this is how reactive Lidl have been. Anyone reading their proposals could see multiple problems without any difficultly – highlighted by the numerous objections the council has received. Yet instead of thinking of these problems and addressing them in their proposals, it was as if tonight was the first time they’d really thought through the full implications of their proposals. When asked about how access to the health centre would be provided during the construction period (at least 6 months, some – or most, who knows – of which will involve the car park being completely closed to vehicles) Mr Mitchell had no response. He said that Lidl have been looking to come to Nailsea for 15 years yet their plans do not show any sense of understanding of the area or complexities of the site they are proposing to build on.

In all it was a very interesting evening. I felt that Mr Mitchell and Mr Robinson comported themselves very well in the face of strong opposition. Yet despite the promise of the improvements to the Station Road car park I still cannot support their proposal. There are problems beyond just the loss of parking spaces. There is the fact that they are proposing to chop down eleven trees currently protected by Tree Protection Orders, there’s the fact that the store is an eyesore and completely out of keeping with the rest of the architecture (if you can call it that!) in the area, there’s the fact that the proposed car park is poorly designed, there’s the fact that the disabled spaces have been significantly reduced and poorly sited (something, admittedly, they have promised to look at), and so on.

It’s all very well and good to say that the previous owners of the site planned to build a Sainsbury’s on the site but that was not agreed with the local people and the vitriol directed at Lidl presently would have been equally directed at Sainsbury’s had they been the ones to make the proposal. The problem isn’t that Lidl want to build on the car park, it’s that there are plans to build on the car park and no matter the purported benefits to local businesses (something many are dubious about) or the promises to replace the spaces, the chaos during the building and the uncertainty regarding access to the health centre subsequently seem a high price to pay to get cheap smoked salmon.