A councillor has asked why a decision to allow a gambling company to open in a former Spalding bank was held behind closed doors.
BoyleSports (UK) Limited has been granted change of use permission by South Holland District Council to turn the former Barclay’s Bank in Hall Place into a betting shop.
It is set to open from 8am to 10pm each day.
It was a decision delegated to the head of planning Phil Norman by the Chairman’s Panel, which decides if it will be decided behind closed doors or the publicly broadcast Planning Committee, a meeting of which was due to take place last night (Wednesday).
Coun James Le Sage used last week’s meeting of South Holland District Council to ask why the panel had decided to delegate it to a planning officer rather than it going before the planning committee.
He was told it was because that was what the panel, which also sits behind closed doors, had decided.
Following the Full Council meeting, Coun Le Sage said: “It just seemed a tad odd that it hadn’t gone to the planning committee in the normal way being such a contentious issue.
“Personally, I don’t feel the town centre needs another betting or gaming establishment.
“South Holland District Council should be working on attracting ‘better’ business into the town and building the market back up to where it should be to attract people back in.”
The BoyleSport application received 16 objections from members of the public, plus those from MP Sir John Hayes, ward member Coun Gary Taylor and the Spalding and District Civic Society.
Objections raised included that there were too many gambling establishments in the area.
The applicant though claimed that passing the application would still only mean that 1.6 per cent of the businesses in Spalding town centre were gambling related and 5.7 per cent of ‘primary shopping frontage’.
In documents it submitted in response to the objections it also claimed one objector was ‘acting on behalf of a competing betting office’.
Planning officers agreed stating: “Taking into consideration the relatively low percentage of betting shops that exist both within the Primary Shopping Frontage and town centre as a whole it is not considered that the addition of a further betting office would result in an over-proliferation of similar uses.
“The applicant’s agent has submitted a footfall survey undertaken by a competitor at six locations in August 2024.
“This concluded that the average footfall to the betting shops across the six locations was comparable to those of other town centre uses. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary it is considered that the provision of a further betting shop would maintain and support the vitality and viability of Spalding town centre.”
