DETAILED plans for a Sainsbury’s supermarket for Dorridge has not resolved the concerns of a residents’ group.In a statement Dorridge And District Residents Association said the planned 222 parking spaces were not enough and raised noise fears.
It spoke after Sainsbury’s submitted a planning application to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council to replace Forest Court.
It said: “As it stands, we suspect that the development would create such demand that the car park would be saturated and the whole of Dorridge would suffer.”
It would re-house GP surgery The Dorridge Practice and establish the store and four other units, including a café fronting onto Station Road and community facility.
The plan is “one of the most challenging issues” ever for the group, it said, which acknowledged it would replace an “eyesore” and meet demands for a supermarket.
But it said: “From the start, it has been recognised that noise, traffic and car parking were going to be the critical issues, and in reviewing the application we find that Sainsbury's have not yet resolved our doubts about these issues.”
It comes after The Silhillian reported on Sunday that most who left comments on the council's website opposed the plan.
The group questioned the reliability of statistics on expected traffic numbers provided in Sainsbury’s planning application.
It said: “If the estimate is 10 per cent out, the car park will be full.” This could leave the surgery “inaccessible”.
“No account” had been taken of the need for access and parking for Station Approache businesses, it said, or needs of non-Sainsbury’s shoppers.
The group said it was “hard to see” how more spaces could be found unless the development was scaled down.
Forest Road residents will “have to tolerate the construction nuisance, but will have to live with the deliveries and extra traffic thereafter”. Deliveries would start at 5am.
It said: “We should not forget that currently Dorridge is extremely quiet on a Sunday and this will change, especially for those residents.”
The statement said: “Sainsbury's have not yet made a convincing case that the noise generated by deliveries and by chillers and air-conditioning will not be a nuisance and we are doing our best to support the residents in resolving these issues.”
The group said it hoped Sainsbury’s would resolve these issues. “Sainsbury's have assured us that they accept that these concerns are reasonable and will seek to explain or resolve them.”
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