Supermarket plan 'was ditched after social media campaign'

The plans would have seen an ALDI supermarket built behind the town hall on Leonards Road car park

Social media and people from outside Ivybridge have been blamed for the collapse of plans to build a new supermarket, which left the council out of pocket by almost half a million pounds.  

In July, South Hams District Council (SHDC) rejected the project following a campaign which saw them in conflict with Ivybridge town council. 

Members of the council's audit and governance committee discussed a report on Thursday into what had gone wrong with Ivybridge’s regeneration scheme, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) reports.

SHDC had agreed to put £9 million into the project which would have seen an ALDI supermarket built behind the town hall on Leonards Road car park; land owned by South Hams council. 

The council’s decision to pursue the plans followed a public consultation in 2020 which showed two thirds of nearly 2,000 respondents supported the proposals.

'Ferocious campaign'

However two years later, after SHDC had already invested £480,000, critics described it as “degeneration, not regeneration.”

Lance Austen, chair of the committee, said: “The town council completely changed its opinion and came out with a totally different decision and there was a pretty ferocious social media campaign against the project.”

Cllr Austen said he felt much of the campaign was being organised by people "in some of the sort of more expensive surrounding areas telling me how they didn’t want an Aldi in the town".

Lib Dem councillor for Stokenham, Julian Brazil, said he thought local people and businesses had just lost confidence in the council’s ability to deliver the project. 

“They talked about moving the skatepark. They talked about increased car parking spaces. And they talked about regeneration. By the time it came to the planning committee, none of those had been resolved," he said.

"The feeling, if you go into Ivybridge now, particularly from the Chamber of Commerce, is that they were not listened to by this council, and that’s why they turned against it,” he added.

He said he feared a similar thing could happen again.

Councillors on the committee agreed to note the contents of the project closure report and, within the next six months, adopt a new planning protocol for major developments.