Centros Miller

Centros Miller: The Current Situation - 22 Nov 07

The campaign is quiet at the moment as six months have now passed since Centros Miller submitted its planning applications. Some of the numerous objections to the Centros plans can be viewed on the council website in the form of pdf documents. Click on the Associated Documents tab to see the list of documents. Unfortunately the council web site does not conform to established web standards which means that only those using the Internet Explorer browser and some other web browsers will be able to see the documents. Users of FireFox and other browsers will be disappointed.

The original schedule was for the planning committee to meet in September 2007 to determine the council's attitude to the proposed development. However, the traffic and retail impact assessments produced by Centros Miller were trashed by the council's independent consultants. The chief planning officer made it clear that officers could not at that point (mid-July) support the development as proposed, mainly (but not exclusively, we understand) because of these adverse reports. Centros Miller is supposed to have set about negotiating away the problems to produce new submissions. The likely date for this re-submission seems to be receding ever further into the future.

Centros Miller has held some meetings over recent months with planning officers to discuss evolution of the scheme, but we understand that Centros Miller itself has cancelled the two most recent scheduled meetings.

The official response this week to our enquiries of the planning officer responsible for the case was as follows:

“The schedule for re-submission is of course entirely in Centros' own hands. We are advised by them that amended/new plans and assessments may be forthcoming shortly after Christmas, although there are no fixed dates. I'm sorry I can't be any more specific than that - clearly Centros are working on the resubmissions as we speak.”

Unofficial comments suggest that it may be even later than January; and that from Centros Miller’s point of view, the re-drafting of the traffic impact assessment is causing most difficulty.

There will be another period of consultation (a period of 21 days) once Centros Miller has made its re-submissions. All previous objectors will be contacted directly by the planning office to this effect once the documents have been received.