Aldi plots Formby store
The discount food retailer wants to transform the derelict site off Southport Old Road into a 19,800 sq ft supermarket.
Designs by The Harris Partnership envisage a 14,500 sq ft shop floor. Proposals would replace the existing access to the site from Moss Side, to be accessed from a junction on Formby Bypass.
Visitors would be provided with 121 car parking spaces, including eight disabled and four electric vehicle charging. There would also be 14 cycle spaces.
Formerly home to Porter Fuchsia’s plant nursery, the two-acre plot is now vacant. Plans for the site include the demolition of the remaining buildings to make room for the store.
This would be Aldi’s first store in Formby, with both of its closest shops located six miles away in Thornton and Birkdale.
Avison Young is the scheme’s planning consultant. Also on the team is transport consultant Cameron Rose, landscape architect Vector, and noise consultant Spectrum. ACS Consulting is providing the arboricultural impact assessment.
Bryn Richards, Aldi’s regional property director, said: “It is clear that there is local demand for access to a discount food retailer and we’re confident that this previously developed site is the best location for us.”
To find out more about the plans, search for application number DC/2023/00548 on Sefton Council’s planning portal.
Elsewhere in the North West, Aldi is currently running a consultation for a 13,300 sq ft store in Congleton, which will end this week.
Yet another out of town, car dependent shop. When will we learn?
By Martin Cranmer
Great news! Aldi have tried before and Sefton MBC have given way to the demands of Tesco and John Lewis and M&S. About time their stangle hold on the business community was challenged. Plus! More employment opportunities for locals in an expanding population as Sefton MBC continues to permit green belt building!
By Rob Davidson
Martin, cars make people’s lives far better.
By Gilly
Waitrose is right in the middle of Formby and they have a big car park, why? because when people do a big shop they transport it home in their car, it cannot be done on the bus or with a bike, especially if you are elderly or have kids.
By Anonymous
Looks really good! Cheaper good and goods and more choice for everyone
By Stuart wood
@‘Gilly’
Unless you’re run down by one.
By SW
@SW
Or socially isolated because you can’t cross the road outside your house. Or walk to local facilities because of the road infrastructure making the route unpleasant or downright dangerous. Or likely to die prematurely due to poor air quality.
@Gilly.
Cars only make people’s lives better because we’ve spent the entire last century designing places so that people are reliant upon cars. If we’d put anything like the same time, effort and money into enabling walking, cycling and public transport, with facilities located to that people can access them without having to (afford to) own and drive a car then the lives of far more people would have been considerably more improved.
By Martin Cranmer
@SW…no situation is all or nothing. Yes car usage should be minimised/designed out in so far as it is possible whilst also acknowledging that car usage has its place in improving people’s ability to move around. Horses and carts also ran people over and probably killed a fair few. Balance is what is needed and the planning authorities currently decide that balance. That’s the part that’s up for discussion.
By Anon