Return of the Mac?
McDonald's restaurants. That’s what they call themselves, but they don’t really fit the dictionary definition of a restaurant, do they? “A place where meals are prepared and served to customers”, says the Cambridge Dictionary. Well, it’s questionable whether anything is prepared on the site. For a start, the fries arrive at the franchises pre-chipped, pre-coated in sodium acid pyrophosphate (to stop them greying, apparently), partially cooked and flash frozen. They get dumped in hot oil on the premises, but that's hardly “preparation”. Then there’s the question of “serving”. If getting your purchase handed to you on a plastic tray while you stand waiting at the counter before finding your own sticky table at which to consume your sodium-acid-pyrophosphate-coated (but deliciously golden-looking) fries, and then clearing away your own rubbish and tray counts as “service”, then I guess they are a restaurant. That’s also assuming you consider what they sell to be “food”.
Love them or loathe them though, McDonalds seem here to stay. But when Ronald and chums came to Cleveleys to try and build a new drive-through franchise on Morrisons car park, locals got in a tizzy, and after a series of consultations, letters to the council, and even protests in the carpark, the proposals were unanimously rejected by Wyre Council in October 2018 and the plans halted. Hooray for truth, justice and the Amounderness Way.
How strange then, that some of the preparation work related to the building of a McDonald's restaurant on the site seem to be going ahead anyway. Residents have been commenting on social media over the past week or so that work is going on at the supermarket, but nobody seems to worried about it. To facilitate a new building on the car park (next to the petrol station) would have required utilities going in, as well as work to the roundabout to cope with the additional flow of traffic. Some of the work going on Morrissons right now has been confirmed as laying of power cables - but what for?
Morrisons employees have allegedly said to customers that they are building a garden centre. If that is the case then where is the planning permission for a garden centre? After the plans for McDonalds were rejected, the related plans for illuminated signage were all withdrawn, so what are the electric cables for? Is it just a coincidence that this is being done after an appeal was lodged over the proposed McDonalds drive thru at Cleveleys Morrisons?
That’s right, McDonalds are appealing - something I never thought I’d say.
An appeal over planning permission has to be lodged within 6 months of the rejection in order to be valid. The decision to reject the plans was made on the 5th Oct 2018. According to Wyre Council’s planning website the appeal was acknowledged by the Planning Inspectorate (to whom such appeals are lodged) on the 4th April 2019 - six months to the day. A cynical person might say that they left it to the eleventh hour to give residents enough time to forget about it.
What are the grounds of the appeal? The application was originally rejected due to the proximity to residential homes. Have any of those houses moved further away from Morrisons in the intervening 6 months?
The appellant’s grounds don’t have to include a demonstration that anything has changed, just that the original decision was wrong. Oddly, the appeal does not attempt to question any of the claims made in the rejection such as the impact on residents and local council plans. Instead the appeal to the Planning Inspectorate - a national body who can overturn the decisions made at local Council level - focuses on the government’s national planning policies. It claims that the project will support the government’s economic, social and environmental objectives. The appeal claims that a McDonalds in Cleveleys will:
The whole mess of a project needs to be looked at again from the ground up. An alternative to Morrisons was proposed in a sequential test - the Jubilee Gardens leisure complex would have been ideal for a McDonalds as it would have fit right in alongside the existing businesses there. The test discounted the site because the only vacant spot - the Jubilee pub - was not for sale. Since then, the empty pub has been the subject of much discussion after it has been repeatedly vandalised. It needs pulling down and replacing, so the original findings of the sequential test are out of date.
Also, since the decision, work has begun on the nearby Norcross roundabout to facilitate the new retail site there. The new road layout there will drastically change the flow of traffic around Cleveleys including to Morrisons, and for this reason surely any assessments made at the time of application are now also flawed.
Nobody at Cleveleys News particularly wants a McDonalds here, but we don’t want to spoil anybody else’s fun by staging our own protest either. We kept our followers abreast of the plans and their progress as it unfolded last year and we respect the residents who protested and got the result they wanted. We sincerely hope that it doesn’t get overturned on the sly.
Don’t underestimate Ronald McDonald though. He marched into East Germany the moment the Berlin wall came down, so don’t think he’s going to be easily deterred from Cleveleys by a few letters and placards. Their expansion policy is ruthless. They want the maximum customer base, which is the real reason why they don’t want to build on the seafront - from a demographic point of view they can catch people from miles around Morrisons roundabout, but the same radius around Jubilee Gardens would only seem to catch a lot of fish when viewed by their bean-counters.
It seems highly unlikely that the work currently being undertaken at Morrisons is for their supposed electric garden centre when the land-owners will know about the ongoing appeal. Maybe this work is in preparation for an assumed victory? If it really is for something else, will they graciously step aside should McDonalds win on appeal? Whatever they try, we are sure that the residents of Cleveleys will step up again and show the corporate bullies what Cleveleys folk are made of. Messing with us is a Big McStake.
Love them or loathe them though, McDonalds seem here to stay. But when Ronald and chums came to Cleveleys to try and build a new drive-through franchise on Morrisons car park, locals got in a tizzy, and after a series of consultations, letters to the council, and even protests in the carpark, the proposals were unanimously rejected by Wyre Council in October 2018 and the plans halted. Hooray for truth, justice and the Amounderness Way.
 |
| The McDonalds that wasn't built. |
Morrisons employees have allegedly said to customers that they are building a garden centre. If that is the case then where is the planning permission for a garden centre? After the plans for McDonalds were rejected, the related plans for illuminated signage were all withdrawn, so what are the electric cables for? Is it just a coincidence that this is being done after an appeal was lodged over the proposed McDonalds drive thru at Cleveleys Morrisons?
That’s right, McDonalds are appealing - something I never thought I’d say.
An appeal over planning permission has to be lodged within 6 months of the rejection in order to be valid. The decision to reject the plans was made on the 5th Oct 2018. According to Wyre Council’s planning website the appeal was acknowledged by the Planning Inspectorate (to whom such appeals are lodged) on the 4th April 2019 - six months to the day. A cynical person might say that they left it to the eleventh hour to give residents enough time to forget about it.
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| Consultations were held with this clown. The one on the right. |
The appellant’s grounds don’t have to include a demonstration that anything has changed, just that the original decision was wrong. Oddly, the appeal does not attempt to question any of the claims made in the rejection such as the impact on residents and local council plans. Instead the appeal to the Planning Inspectorate - a national body who can overturn the decisions made at local Council level - focuses on the government’s national planning policies. It claims that the project will support the government’s economic, social and environmental objectives. The appeal claims that a McDonalds in Cleveleys will:
- help build a strong, responsive and competitive economy,
- support strong, vibrant and healthy communities,
- contribute to protecting and enhancing our natural, built and historic environment,
- improve biodiversity, and minimise waste and pollution.
The whole mess of a project needs to be looked at again from the ground up. An alternative to Morrisons was proposed in a sequential test - the Jubilee Gardens leisure complex would have been ideal for a McDonalds as it would have fit right in alongside the existing businesses there. The test discounted the site because the only vacant spot - the Jubilee pub - was not for sale. Since then, the empty pub has been the subject of much discussion after it has been repeatedly vandalised. It needs pulling down and replacing, so the original findings of the sequential test are out of date.
Also, since the decision, work has begun on the nearby Norcross roundabout to facilitate the new retail site there. The new road layout there will drastically change the flow of traffic around Cleveleys including to Morrisons, and for this reason surely any assessments made at the time of application are now also flawed.
Nobody at Cleveleys News particularly wants a McDonalds here, but we don’t want to spoil anybody else’s fun by staging our own protest either. We kept our followers abreast of the plans and their progress as it unfolded last year and we respect the residents who protested and got the result they wanted. We sincerely hope that it doesn’t get overturned on the sly.
Don’t underestimate Ronald McDonald though. He marched into East Germany the moment the Berlin wall came down, so don’t think he’s going to be easily deterred from Cleveleys by a few letters and placards. Their expansion policy is ruthless. They want the maximum customer base, which is the real reason why they don’t want to build on the seafront - from a demographic point of view they can catch people from miles around Morrisons roundabout, but the same radius around Jubilee Gardens would only seem to catch a lot of fish when viewed by their bean-counters.
It seems highly unlikely that the work currently being undertaken at Morrisons is for their supposed electric garden centre when the land-owners will know about the ongoing appeal. Maybe this work is in preparation for an assumed victory? If it really is for something else, will they graciously step aside should McDonalds win on appeal? Whatever they try, we are sure that the residents of Cleveleys will step up again and show the corporate bullies what Cleveleys folk are made of. Messing with us is a Big McStake.
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