Supermarket blocked from building on city's edge

A supermarket has been refused permission to build a shop on a green field on the edge of a city.

Bath and North East Somerset Council turned down the plans for a Lidl on London Road in Bath, following concerns the plans did not adequately protect bats and "could harm the Bath UNESCO World Heritage Site".

Traffic worries had also been raised, as well as concern about how the supermarket could affect shops in Larkhall, as well as Bath's other supermarkets.

Lidl had argued Bath needed a budget supermarket in the east of the city and said the shop would create 40 jobs, reduce customer mileage by 29% and cut carbon emissions by 82 tonnes.

But the controversial plans attracted 740 objections and 256 comments in support, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Green councillors Joanna Wright and Saskia Heijltjes, who represent the Lambridge area, welcomed the news.

"We have been fighting this for nearly four years. Clearly it matters a lot in the city," Wright said.

"I know a lot of people are concerned about the cost of living crisis and they would like cheaper food, but they also really recognise the impact on the highways that this was going to have.

"It was going to cause so much disturbance in the east of Bath," she said.

Plans for a new Lidl in Cheddar were also refused recently, after Somerset Council said the supermarket had presented insufficient evidence to outweigh the potential harm to protected species such as bats and crested newts.

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