Aldi to open long-awaited new Preston store as part of wider suburban shopping centre after highways roadblock is removed

It is more than two years since the green light was given to the redevelopment of part of the disused Cottam Brickworks site, between Cottam Avenue and Tom Benson Way.

However, an increasingly bitter battle over who should pay for highway layout changes at the entrance to the neighbouring household waste recycling centre has pitched the developer of the retail scheme against Lancashire County Council finance bosses - leaving the vision for the plot in limbo.

Now, Preston City Council has stepped in to break the impasse by offering to bridge the gap between what BXB Cottam Properties Limited - the applicant behind the plans - says it can afford and the full price of the road revamp, which County Hall has demanded is covered at no cost to its own coffers.

The city authority will use more than £300,000 of the £1m pot that the proposal will generate for developer-funded infrastructure improvements in the area in order to ensure that the blueprint for what it regards as a “key, strategic development” is at last brought to life. However, the highway redesign is expected to take at least a year to complete - and it could be two years before the new Aldi branch welcomes its first customers, a meeting of the city council’s planning committee heard.

As the Lancashire Post revealed last autumn, acrimony over the stalemate that had been reached between BXB and the county council

behind closed doors spilled out into the public domain - and dragged in the discount retailer that will be at the heart of the new development.

The developer said that it was “bemused” as to why it was being asked to fully fund a redesigned junction for the county council-owned waste recycling centre, while Aldi claimed that the authority was jeopardising the proposed new store by failing to agree a price for the sale of a small plot of land needed to provide access to the development.

Lancashire County Council staunchly defended its stance at the time, with cabinet member for economic development and growth Aidy Riggott accusing BXB of “expecting Lancashire’s residents to stump up the cost” of the required works.

Earlier this month, when quizzed at a cabinet meeting over the issue by Preston West division representative John Potter, deputy county council leader Alan Vincent said that the principle adopted by the authority was “one that says that public money should not be used to enhance a development for a multi-billion pound private enterprise”.

“I’m perfectly content with that decision,” added County Cllr Vincent, who is also the cabinet member for resources.

County council highways bosses have demanded a raft of changes to the waste recycling centre entrance in order to accommodate access to the new neighbourhood facilities - a likely mix of retail outlets and community services - which will be taken from the same arm of the Tom Benson Way roundabout.

The work - currently estimated to cost £530,000 - will involve widening the existing route within the site to provide a dedicated right-hand turn lane that will ensure there is sufficient queuing capacity for vehicles heading to the tip.

Drivers will have to wait for a gap in what will be two lanes of oncoming traffic leaving the district centre and travelling back out onto the road network.

BXB has said that its development will be financially viable only if it pays no more than £225,000 upfront towards the cost of the overhaul.

Preston City Council’s planning committee has now agreed to remove a condition imposed as part of the original planning permission which obliged the developer to agree the recycling centre access works with the county council before building could commence on the site - a circle that could not be squared as a result of the dispute over how they should be funded.

However, the highway upgrade will still go ahead, with BXB making a “unilateral undertaking” to commit the £225,000 it says can be afforded and the city council handing over £305,000 from the £1.059m that the developer will pay in what is known as “community infrastructure levy” (CIL).

Under national planning rules, that cash has to be earmarked for “the provision, improvement, replacement, operation or maintenance of infrastructure to support the development” of an area.

In Preston, CIL payments are usually transferred to the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal to fund wider works that facilitate the expansion of areas like North West Preston. A local authority’s intentions for CIL have to be laid out in pre-determined “infrastructure funding statements” drawn up to explain how it plans to use the cash.

However, Preston City Council’s development management team leader Phil Cousins told planning committee members that after “careful consideration” - and because of the “exceptional circumstances” that had seen Cottam Brickworks’ redevelopment held up for a decade since it was first conceived - the authority had concluded that it was in position to use a share of the CIL money to help make the scheme a reality.

In a report to the committee, planning officers noted that whilst the move “will result in a reduced CIL contribution into the City Deal fund from what was anticipated from this site, if the development did not go ahead on viability grounds, then there would be no CIL contributions [at all]”.

They added that the decision would help secure delivery of “the essential” Cottam district centre to serve the residents of Ingol, Tanterton and Cottam itself.

As part of the arrangement - secured by a so-called “section 106 agreement” - if the development ends up generating a greater profit than expected, the developer will be obliged to pay a yet-to-be-negotiated percentage of that total to the city council, which would transfer the cash into the City Deal.

BXB will also be giving County Hall £650,000 to fund other highway works deemed necessary to facilitate the district centre, including the installation of a toucan crossing on Tom Benson Way and traffic-calming measures on Cottam Avenue to discourage rat-running through the new development from the road that will act as its secondary access point.

Cllr David Borrow, the city authority’s cabinet member for planning and regulation - who also sits on the planning committee - described the site as being “absolutely key” to the overall vision for North West Preston.

“We can’t afford to keep this [location] undeveloped and allow [it] just to stay as it is. It's really important as part of the development of the city that we allow this process to go ahead,” he added.

It is expected that more than 5,500 new homes will be built in the North West Preston area in the 20 years up to the mid 2030s, under a masterplan for the area which was adopted back in 2017. Cottam is also identified as a “strategic site” where around 1,300 properties are - or already have been - created.

Addressing planning committee members, Peter Tooher, the agent for the Brickworks application - and executive director of Nexus Planning - thanked city council officers for their “tenacity” in helping to find a solution. However, he suggested that the county council’s position during discussions had been “unrealistic and perhaps unreasonable”.

“Indeed, our view is that they have confused their hats as landowner, highway authority and waste authority to the point where we have potentially ended up with the waste centre tail wagging the dog of the district centre,” Mr. Tooher said.

Questioned on the likely timeframe for the development by committee chair Javed Iqbal, he added that it was “hard to pin a date” on completion, but said: “I would certainly hope that we would start…the access works this year - that’s a significant piece of work in itself, [which is] probably going to take about a year to 18 months.

“I would hope that the Aldi which is lined up and raring to go would be in place within the next two years.”

After the meeting, a spokesperson for Lancashire County Council told the Post: “We know that people in Cottam have wanted this supermarket for some time and it is also something we were happy to support as long as the county council was not left out of pocket.

"We are funded by the taxpayer and feel it is important that our resources are used to fund essential work like pothole repairs, rather than reconfiguring the household waste recycling centre for safety reasons to ensure a development for a large multi-national company can go ahead."

A spokesperson for Aldi – which already has four branches in Preston and is developing a fifth at the docks - said of the city council's decision that the firm was “pleased that it appears that a solution has been found to allow the development to go ahead for the local community”.

"We’re excited to move forward with our plans to build a brand-new Aldi store for Cottam, making healthy affordable food more accessible to local people, whilst also delivering up to 40 new jobs in the area.”

Overall, it is expected that the site will create 170 full time jobs and generate almost £42m of economic output a year.

As well as the supermarket, the district centre will provide units totalling more than 11,000 square metres, which could be filled by other shops, eateries, offices or community facilities, such as a clinic or nursery. That element of the site – along with the 89 residential properties also granted outline permission in 2021 - will be subject to a more detailed “reserved matters” application at a later date.

BXB director Gary Goodman praised Preston City Council for having “demonstrated that it respects the wishes of the local community, welcomes investment and prioritises brownfield land”.

He added: “It has sensibly dealt with an unjustified financial impediment imposed by Lancashire County Council and I am grateful to it for its support.

“We’ve been trying for six years to agree with the county council a methodology for the valuation of the final strip of land, which is simply unprecedented.

“Our status as a neighbour makes us a ‘special purchaser’, meaning that the county council can’t sell to anyone else and I am hoping that with this latest development they no longer feel the need to impede what is a popular scheme granted permission through the democratic process. I’m expecting them to open talks shortly about the land sale.”

The city council's planning committee last year relieved BXB of previously-requested contributions to school places and affordable housing, which the developer also successfully argued could not be made without rendering the project unviable.