Long Eaton: Bigger Lidl and Wickes stores given green light

Councillors approved the plans at a meeting on Wednesday

Plans to build a larger DIY store and supermarket in a Derbyshire town have been approved.

The proposals, for a Wickes DIY store and a Lidl supermarket to be built in Long Eaton, were unanimously agreed at a meeting on Wednesday.

Applications for the site date back to 2019, when Erewash District Council originally refused permission to build the stores.

Both could now be open by November 2023.

The latest plans - pitched by two companies alongside Derby developer Clowes - differed from already approved proposals for the site.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Lidl and Wickes won approval for their shops at a planning appeal in 2021 after the council had refused the plans in 2019 - due to the risk of the shops proving to be "category killers" for other local producers.

However, they returned with plans that will see the Lidl marginally increase and the Wickes store nearly double in size.

Customer parking will also increase from 157 spaces to 207.

The applicant said the development would create 70 new jobs

At the meeting, resident Rachel Smith said she wanted a new noise assessment to be carried out due to the size of the Wickes store almost doubling to become bigger than the Lidl.

However, Julie White, agent for the applicants, said the size of the Wickes store needed to be increased so it could offer the full set of services it wished to provide.

She said the overall development would create 70 new jobs, 40 at Lidl and 30 at Wickes, and provide an economic boost for the area.

The plans were backed by councillor Kevin Miller, who said: "We need to allow these businesses to expand their development.

"In Long Eaton, it is, I think, a good idea to develop Long Eaton, as it is at the moment."