It was in December last year that the Woking Borough Council’s Planning Committee approved the application from Sainsbury’s to expand their store in Redding Way.  It has taken until late August this year for Sainsbury’s and Woking Council to complete the legal paperwork and for Woking Borough Council to issue their decision notice granting planning permission. The decision notice contains 43 conditions and 19 instructions and it will take time for us to go through the decision notice in detail to check that the points the KRA won during the planning process are contained in the final document.

This application and decision notice is the last in a long struggle by Sainsbury’s to gain permission to extend. Those who have followed the saga will know that the previous application was rejected by Woking Borough Council and was scheduled to be the subject of a public enquiry. That public enquiry was put on hold at the request of Woking Borough Council whilst they worked with Sainsbury’s put together an acceptable package. Sainsbury’s have now withdrawn their objections to previous rejections by Woking Borough Council so there are no grounds for a public enquiry.

Even after the latest proposal was published last October with the Council recommending acceptance the KRA fought hard to have more social and environmental conditions built into the plan. We will update our information once we have studied the full text of the planning decision.

Finally just to remind the readers of the outline plan that has been agreed.

PLAN/2011/0160 Proposed extensions to Sainsbury’s store to south-west and south-east of the existing store, part increase in height of the existing building  by up to 1.9m, alterations to layout and formation of new parking are to north-east of Homebase, enclosure of service yard and altered pedestrian access onto Bagshot Road.