A councillor has raised concerns that big businesses could be discouraged from coming to Spalding if the authority’s planning guidelines become too tough.
Coun Paul Barnes aired concerns about the potential knock-on effect of a new shop front design guide – which has been drawn up to help smarten up the appearance of Spalding and other towns – at a meeting of South Holland District Council’s Policy Development Panel, writes Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle.
Councillors heard the guide now being put together by the South and East Lincolnshire Councils Partnership sets out the ways in which it expects businesses to make changes or enhancements to ensure they remain within the character of their area.
But Coun Barnes (pictured) questioned what would happen if a chain store wants to come to Spalding and use its standard designs, adding: “But what if that happens to be their corporate logo – Yorkshire Trading, Boots – people like that?
“So, would we turn down a company coming into Spalding because of material considerations? That seems like a negative thing to do.”
Pranali Parikh, director of economic development at the council said: “That’s where usually the economic development team and the economic investment officer will work with those kinds of companies.
“They will liaise with the conservation officer or planning officer and any company moving in – which we do generally anyway, when any business wants to come in – what kind of support they need.
“Usually, when we’re sitting together with the consultants, we can come up with a better design solution that works for both parties.”
Coun Barnes also questioned whether the council partnership has the resources to properly enforce the proposed shop front design guide.
“What are you doing to make sure that you’ve got the resources available and finances to actually enforce this?” he said. “We’re not enforcing as much as we’d like to. Somebody needs to be raising the flag and say ‘if we’re going to be doing things that are not acceptable, somehow we’ve got to find the resources and finances to the planning and enforcement officers to actually do something?’”
But Emilie Wales, heritage manager at the council partnership, said that she believes that the councils partnership has the ‘officer capacity’ to deliver the aims of the guide and issue enforcement notices if required.
The shop front design guide is still in a draft format and will be discussed by members of the South Holland District Council’s cabinet at a later date.
