Supermarket in Armadale

Feb 18 2010 West Lothian Courier

I WRITE regarding the various supermarket and housing planning applications in the Armadale area.

During my time as an Armadale councillor I strongly supported and was involved in trying to attract one of the larger supermarkets to Armadale.

The proposal at the time was to build a supermarket at the Volunteer Park and for the developer to build a small two-standed stadium at the north side of Watson Park (where the shows go).

I supported the proposal for the following reasons: 1 - It would help retain Armadale’s retail spending in Armadale; 2 - It would help retain and possibly increase jobs in the town; 3 - It would have provided some competition to one other supermarket in the town at the time; 4 - All the other small businesses in the town would get a spin of with a centrally situated supermarket.

Unfortunately at the time the supermarkets approached did not consider that Armadale and the surrounding area had enough population to justify the investment.

What a difference now, with I believe seven to eight applications being loaded.

I would ask the people of Armadale, the councillors and the planning committee to support the application that comes nearest to achieving the reasons of my support for the previous applications.

While I have no objections to the residential development part of the Armadale Station Development I strongly oppose the various facilities part of their application.

The sighting of the various other facilities in this application should be as near to the existing Armadale town centre as possible and possibly with their new housing road walkways and bus routes laid out in such a fashion as to encourage incomers to fully integrate with the existing township, otherwise Armadale as we know it will completely die and the existing hard pressed commercial centre will simply disappear as a result

All major planning applications should be assessed on their ability to benefit the town, not to kill it off.

I would appreciate on persons like-minded as myself

James Sibbald, (Former councillor).