A PLANNING battle over one of Leominster's most valuable development sites has entered a new phase.

Planning watchdogs have called for riverside land at Mill Street to be used for home building rather than a 'massive shed' housing a DIY superstore with a £2.6 million annual turnover.

The 'Focus' store proposed for vacant land owned by industrialists Frank H Dale would cover twice the floor area of the Priory Church or the local Somerfield supermarket says Leominster Civic Trust.

Attack

In a renewed attack on the Dale plan (the company would rent the new store to Focus), the civic trust is calling on county planners to stick to the guidelines of their draft Unitary Development Plan. That would permit house building on the site.

The land, Dale's former office site between Mill Street and the River Kenwater, is earmarked for up to 30 dwellings in the UDP. The civic trust says that would be the best use for the site.

Chairman, Dr Dennis Hawkins, says the height and scale of houses would be more appropriate for the setting. That option would fit current demands for sustainability - using brownfield rather than greenfield sites for new dwellings wherever possible.

It would be the most profitable use of the land. But Dale have stated they could not countenance it because of potential problems of homes so close to their steel fabrication works.

The civic trust retorts that it finds such reasoning difficult to swallow. "We find it hard to accept that the steel factory creates so much daytime noise that housing use would be precluded, given that there are other existing houses nearby."

Dales have submitted revised plans for the new store following previous objections about its impact on its setting. The development will increase shopping choice in Leominster, create new jobs and help to safeguard existing jobs at Dales factory, company chiefs have stressed.

Rental income generated by the new store will be ploughed back into the family firm to strengthen its prospects for the future, they maintain.

l Leominster Town Council is urging county planners to refuse F H Dale's plan for a DIY store and garden centre at Mill Street.

Town councillors are worried that the new retail development 'could seriously impact in the viability of the town centre'. They point out that the site is already earmarked for housing in the Unitary Development plan.