The Co-operative Estates.

Client

The Co-operative Group

Size

316 sq.m GFA

Local Authority

Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council

Sectors

Retail and Town Centres

Key Project Information

  • Pegasus Group has a long standing relationship with Co-op across its Food and Funeralcare business.
  • We gets results for Co-op for new food stores and funeral homes and assisting with securing best value for land it wants to dispose of.
  • For example a new food store in Oakley, where this was a hard fought permission, that took over 18 months to achieve.
  • Our tenacity in achieving the permission and overcoming significant site and surrounding issues, allowed Co-op to have representation in a village where there are few other sites.
  • The Co-op had been looking for a suitable site for a new foodstore in Oakley, Basingstoke for a number of years and had agreed a conditional deal on a car sales and forecourt site in the village.
  • We were approached to undertake a pre-application advice request with the Council and secure a satisfactory planning consent for a new store, parking and servicing with the necessary plant and opening hours to suit the Co-op.
  • There were a number of rounds of pre-application advice requests as the layout was finessed.
  • Despite this, the planning application process was 18 months due to issues relating to trees, highways, impact on residential amenity.
  • The planning application was approved at planning committee in December 2018.
Coop Oakley site layout

We provide planning expertise to the Co-op under a Framework agreement.  As part of this agreement we provide services to the Co-op for a fixed fee using a menu of approved fees. We have been instructed by the Co-op for a long period of time, extending back further than the previously approved Framework in 2016.  Our relationship with the Co-op is a long standing one.

The aim is to help the Co-op meet its target to open between 80-100 new/relocated/extended food stores per year on the Food side and also to assist with the disposal/redevelopment/extension/acquisition of its Funeralcare portfolio of properties.

A good case study is for a new food store at Oakley Lane in Oakley, Basingstoke.  We were first instructed to achieve a planning consent for a new food store at the end of 2017 and the planning permission was granted in June 2019.  The planning permission was for the redevelopment of an existing car sales forecourt and showroom within the village of Oakley.  There have been a number of subsequent applications for signage, plant, non material amendments and discharge of conditions.

The key issues with this site were the size and shape of the site (irregular), trees on the boundary with roots that affected the foundation design, the close proximity of neighbouring residential dwellings and the impact on residential amenity.  Because of the site characteristics, there were a number of rounds of pre-application advice requests undertaken with the LPA which led to a number of re-designs of the layout.

All in all, this was a hard fought and time-consuming planning permission but ultimately led to the Co-op launching this store at the end of 2020.

Images courtesy of Inspire Design.

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