Costa Coffee 'will help Cottingham', councillors say

TWO councillors who backed plans for a new Costa Coffee in Cottingham say it will help boost the village.

Some traders say the arrival of the international coffee house chain could hit independent local traders.

Others are worried about the loss of another retail unit, with Costa set to move into a unit previously occupied by a frozen food store in King Street.

But Councillor Ros Jump, one of two Cottingham councillors to support the change of use at an East Riding Council western area planning committee, said she believed it was a good move for the village.

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"Having a national name coming into the village has to be a good thing," she said.

"There were no real planning grounds to oppose it and I heard from very few traders who were actually against it."

Cottingham's Parish Council had recommended refusal for the application.

Parish councillors expressed concerns over possible traffic congestion in King Street being caused by service vehicles and the lack of any fire escape at the rear of the building in the plans.

They also said they did not want to see another shop unit being lost.

But Ms Jump said she had only come across a "handful" of traders who were unhappy over the application.

"If there had been a real groundswell of opinion against it I would have picked up on it, but there wasn't," she said.

"As far as I am concerned, there are currently two very large empty units in King Street and this will fill one of them.

"We don't want Cottingham to be full of empty units."

Councillor Lena Slater, who also represents Cottingham on East Riding Council, said she voted in favour of the application at the authority's western area committee to bring something new to the village.

She said: "Having something like this will attract new people into Cottingham.

"Unfortunately, we lost one café when Woodhead's bakery closed in Hallgate a few months ago, so this will only even things up.

"I am aware some people will think there are too many cafés in such a relatively small area but this will just replace the one we have lost at Woodhead's.

"Unlike some places, Cottingham isn't dying as a shopping centre and this will only benefit the village.

"We are helping to fill an empty unit and hopefully persuade someone else to take on the other empty unit in King Street, which is, after all, in the very centre of the village."

The row over the Costa application follows a long-running debate over a proposed supermarket development on the edge of the village.

An initial application for a 45,000sq ft supermarket, parking for 300 cars and a petrol station in Station Road was first unveiled last year by North Newbald developer Ispace.

In April, revised plans were put forward scaling down the size of the proposed development by 20 per cent.

The main change was the proposed petrol station being dropped from the scheme.

Speaking to the Mail at the time, director Simon Dixon said: "We believe our revised design has addressed a number of the comments expressed relating to concerns in respect of the potential impact of our proposals on the local highway network and the trading position of existing retailers within the village.

"However, much support was also expressed for us to deliver a modern supermarket to address unsustainable shopping patterns, which finds 90 per cent of residents undertaking their main food shopping outside of Cottingham."