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Some 68 per cent of responses, 542, are in favour while 137, 17 per cent, gave partial support.
Just 15 per cent, 116, are against the plans for Forest Court. The firm is still seeking responses, give your views here.
Sainsbury’s revealed a new plan in January for a store about 75 per cent of the size of one rejected by Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council in March last year.
It comes as Dorridge and District Residents Association chairman Ian Spencer said the group did not detect a groundswell of opinion against the new plan.
He told its AGM last night: “I know from talking to various people around the village there is definitely much more people saying that they were happy for the scheme to go ahead.
“It is much more positive. In terms of the residents association, what that tells me is that I have no mandate to oppose it.”
He said: “Although the scheme isn’t necessarily what we want, I believe with careful constructive criticism around its implementation, it represents a scheme that we can probably live with.”
Yet he said there were concerns about the level of extra traffic the 1,812sqm store and six retail units will generate. The vehicle entrance will stay the same, off Avenue Road.
There are also concerns about proposals to remove the central reservation on Station Road, with some concerned it will make it difficult for cars to pull out of Poplar Road, he said.
Mr Spencer said: “Sainsbury’s’ traffic people are telling us that the junction can work and can work well.”
One resident backed the change, saying: “People coming from Knowle hit the dual carriageway and immediately accelerate.”
Mr Spencer said the DDRA would look at commissioning an independent traffic study over the impact of the development.
One said of traffic: “If it is a problem now it is going to be a terrible, terrible problem in the future.”
Another said: “Station Road is already clogged. It is a major major issue, pollution, noise congestion.”
One man said: “Even supporters of the scheme accept that the traffic is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Mr Spencer said: “Sainsbury’s haven’t yet been convincing on the traffic argument.”
He said the DDRA got Sainsbury’s to re-submit parking figures four times for the 2010 application as they contained “basic errors”.
Yet he said the plan could be accepted “if the alternative is putting up with a derelict site”.
Click here for previous Sainsbury's stories.
Yet one man said: “The proposal is too big. A supermarket doesn’t have to be that big, if it was twice the size of the Knowle store [Tesco] it would be acceptable.”
Councillor Ian Courts, a member for Dorridge & Hockley Heath Ward on Solihull council, backed the scheme.
He said: “It does worry me when people automatically say it is too big.”
He said a smaller store would be “less viable” for Sainsbury’s and the council can demand less cash from the firm for village improvements and road schemes.
Concerns should focus on parking and highways, he said. Cllr Courts said he had a “horrible feeling” the council could not reject it on size, meaning it could lose an appeal.
One resident hit out at the council’s planning department as a planning officer recommended the council’s planning committee approve the 2010 scheme.
He told Cllr Courts: “I don’t think they did a good job the last time round, for your transport person to sit up in committee and say it will be self regulating.”
Yet another woman said: “I can’t see that the extra traffic would be a major problem, it is going to be spread across the whole day.
“To me, the school traffic is more of a problem.”
One said: “Most people agree that something has to be done in Forest Court and we do need some sort of supermarket.
“But I think there are probably a lot of people who think that it is too big.”
Mr Spencer said families with young children are “very blasé about it, quite positive”.
He said: “When I talk to people I am guided by the fact that an awful lot of people are in favour of it.”
Ward councillor Andy Mackiewicz said: “You always imagine the worst. The reality is it wouldn’t be as bad as it seems.”
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