The Belmont Homes retail impact statement went up on the Calderdale Council planning website on Friday 12th July. Predictably, the statement claims that the proposed supermarket would not damage the vitality and viability of Hebden Bridge, or the areas of Halifax and Todmorden where the proposed supermarket would draw trade from.
No supermarket intends to set up on the site
Because so far no supermarket wants to be involved in the development, the retail impact statement is based on 2 different scenarios. One is for the impact of a “Top 5” supermarket on Hebden Bridge town centre shops, and the other for a discount supermarket, like Aldi or Lidl.
Last December, Calderdale Council Planning Committee deferred a decision on the Belmont Homes/Setbray planning application for a supermarket and hotel on the Mytholm Works site, because the developers had failed to submit a retail impact assessment showing how the supermarket would affect local shops.
I’m just going out, so I’ve no time right now to write a summary of the Belmont Homes retail impact assessment, or outline Incredible Edible Mytholm’s response.
Please come back soon for more info about Incredible Edible Mytholm’s response and an update on our work preparing a business plan for a sustainable food business on the site, valuing the site and discussion of site purchase with site owners’ rep.
If you’d like to comment, please use the reply space at the bottom of this post or use the contact form.
Support from Hebden Bridge businesses, public and Councillors for Incredible Edible Mytholm’s plans for the site
In the winter, Incredible Edible Mytholm, together with the Coop, carried out its own retail impact assessment of IEM proposals for a sustainable food business on the Mytholm Works site, and of the proposed supermarket and hotel. Opinion among respondents to the survey (around a quarter of town centre shop owners) was strongly in favour of IEM’s proposals and strongly opposed to the proposed supermarket, which local businesses think would damage Hebden Bridge shops and their local suppliers as well.
Since carrying out the survey, Incredible Edible Mytholm has:
- consulted the public on its proposals for the site,receiving a very positive response
- been awarded business consultancy support from the Plunkett Foundation to develop an outline business plan and prepare to set up a community-owned business to buy the site and develop the sustainable food business
- received cross-party support from members of Hebden Royd Town Council
- employed a surveyor to value the site
- held a meeting with the site owners’ representative to discuss buying the Mytholm Works site
Hi there
What is your objection to having a supermarket in the site? The Co Op gets away with high prices and sloppy stock control because of it’s monopoly status. Why should it be the only supermarket? There are plenty of places to grow food in and around Hebden. Look at all the farms that only farm sheep and all of the empty fields. The first eight water mills in this area were corn mills. This is evidence that food does grow on the tops although the practice has died.
Cheers.
Hi
The developer’s retail impact statement is clear that no supermarket is involved in the proposed supermarket development on the Mytholm Works site. Its computer modelling of where a supermarket on that site would take its customers from strongly suggests that customers wouldn’t mostly come from the HB coop, but from other supermarkets in Tod and Halifax. Which makes it unlikely that a supermarket is going to want to open in HB, because that would mean losing customers from their existing nearby branches. The conclusion is that this planning application is only speculative – designed to drive up the price of the land. So it doesn’t really matter if we object to a supermarket or not, because it seems unlikely that there’s ever going to be one. This is what Incredible Edible Mytholm has thought all along, from when we set up at the end of 2012. We weren’t setting up to oppose a supermarket, we were setting up because we thought the site needed to be used constructively for the benefit of the town as a whole.
Agree that land on the tops could grow food. Incredible Edible Mytholm’s plans include investigating the possibility of setting up an experimental agro-ecology farm on the tops. In terms of the Mytholm Works site, we think our plans for a permaculture market garden, agro-ecology training and education base, managed workspace for low carbon businesses, and visitor attraction & eco hotel would create living wage, skilled jobs for the town, help it make the transition to a low carbon economy and also help contribute to a sustainable food system in the UK. IEM thinks that achieving these goals would be useful for the town and Upper Calder Valley.
I think your ideas are good although ambitious because of the lack of similar developments in the Hebden Bridge area. I wouldn’t be confident of the Incredible Edible plans coming to fruition without considerable funding. There is an almost complete lack of similar types of even small to medium scale commercial vegetable and fruit production enterprises in this area. However it deserves all the support it can get. Although food production in this area has to all intents & purposes died out, climatically the region could concievably commercially support raspberries, blackcurrants, and many types of berries as well as staples such as potatoes, barley and possibly rye, oats, hemp and wheat. From that would come cottage industry spin-offs making jams, cereals, clothing, etc.
Cheers, Des.