John Lewis Planning Proposal

Part of Environment – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 3:00 pm on 26 January 2009.

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Photo of Sammy Wilson Sammy Wilson Shadow Spokesperson (Communities and Local Government), Shadow Spokesperson (Education) 3:00, 26 January 2009

Given that there is no application from John Lewis for a planning proposal at present, I will have to try to read the Member’s mind. Since he is here more often than the previous Member who spoke, that will be easy to do.

I assume that the Member is referring to the application that was made by Sprucefield Centre Ltd. That application is undergoing the statutory consultation. A request for further environmental information was lodged with the applicant on 2 December 2008. That information has not yet been provided, but I hope that it will be made available soon.

The stage 1 retail report that followed the BMAP inquiry must also be taken into consideration, and the Planning Appeals Commission indicated to me that it hopes to be in a position to provide that report some time in early 2009. I interpret that as meaning some time this month, so time is running out. The Planning Service will report to me shortly thereafter.

The application is not, of course, directly comparable with that which was made for IKEA, given the differences in the scale and nature of the retailing that is proposed and the locations of each site with reference to the statutory development plans.