A NEW convenience store could be approved in Birkenhead despite nearly 400 people signing petitions against the plans.
The application is due to come to a Wirral Council planning committee on July 18. The application, from Venkadesh Arulampalam hopes to turn a site at 231 to 231a Beckwith Street in Birkenhead from existing children’s indoor play space, Clown Around, into a new convenience retail store. The application said it would be “a viable and productive use of the building” with controlled opening hours.
The building has been through a number of different uses, including a vehicle repair business called Malik Motors. Two applications to turn it into a convenience grocery store and off licence were previously refused by Wirral Council in 2017 and 2018.
According to a council report before the planning committee, the play space offered “small elements of food and beverages, mostly for customers using the facility but it also appears that this was also available on a takeaway basis,” adding: “The premises has now closed due to a decline in visitors and the building is therefore currently vacant.”
The application is for proposed opening hours between 8am and 8pm. The report said the application should be approved, adding: “This hours restriction will limit the impact on residential amenity – by reducing the amount of time the shop will operate for, as well as ensuring that the use is only operating during daytime hours and does not extend into anti-social, late night hours.”
There have been two petitions received with 393 people signing them concerned about privacy, safety, noise, and that the “sale of alcohol attracts trouble to (the) area.” Other concerns include “vaping products attract younger crowds” and “kids on bikes (are) not mindful of pedestrians” as well as the store being near to a school.
Addressing those concerns, the officer report said: “It is also difficult to conclude that the change of use of the premises to a small convenience store would have a significantly greater impact on the amenities of surrounding properties than the extant use as an indoor children’s play centre.
“The extant use would involve fairly regular comings and goings and whilst this would likely be less than a convenience store, it would be more likely to attract more customers who travel by car (with associated disturbance of car engines and car doors shutting), as opposed to a convenience store which, by nature, is more suited to attract customers within walking distance.
“Indoor children’s play centres are also likely to involve higher levels of noise due to the presence of young children playing in a safe environment with reasonably high levels of uncontrolled screaming, shouting, laughing etc.
“It’s acknowledged that the children’s play centre was only small in comparison to many other similar centres and this will have limited the noise – but this same assessment should therefore be taken against the proposed convenience store use, which will only have a sales floor area of approximately 80 square metres.
“This will limit the number of customers at any one time, and ensures that the store will have a similar impact to a traditional corner shop, the likes of which are found throughout the country within high-density residential areas such as this.”
Alongside the approval, a number of conditions are being proposed including a requirement to introduce sound installation to those living in the neighbouring 43 Aspinall Street.
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