Plans approved for new Sunderland Home Bargains store in £10million development

Sunderland City Council’s Planning and Highways Committee, this week, approved a planning application for a new retail development in the Grangetown area.

The £10million scheme, first revealed by Fintry Estates and Hargreaves Land in 2022, includes a new Home Bargains store with around 2,804 sqm gross floorspace.

Those behind the scheme said the discount store would help regenerate a former industrial site which has been vacant for many years and blighted by fly-tipping and anti-social behaviour.

Plans for the site, which sits south of Leechmere Road, also include the demolition of a “reservoir structure” which once served a nearby paper mill and landscaping to make way for the huge retail unit.

Members of the city council’s Planning and Highways Committee gave the plan the stamp of approval at a meeting on Monday, April 3, at City Hall.

A report prepared by council planning officers ahead of the meeting said the development would be acceptable, subject to planning conditions.

Council planning officers, who recommended the scheme for approval, also said the plans would boost biodiversity on the site and would have no “unacceptable impacts” on ecology and residential amenity.

Although there were outstanding issues around drainage, council planners said these matters could be addressed post-decision and controlled by planning conditions.

Jonathan Wallace, of planning and development consultancy Lichfields, spoke in support of the Home Bargains development at the Planning and Highways Committee this week.

Councillors heard the site was vacated in 2006 and had since become “overgrown” and subject to anti-social behaviour, with new regeneration plans aiming to bring the site “back into productive use”.

Mr Wallace added: “I would also highlight that a public consultation exercise was undertaken in relation to this development.

“As part of that, 95% of respondents who came back agreed there was a need to regenerate the site and 91% expressed support for the scheme, so it has got strong public support.

“The development will regenerate a long-standing vacant and overgrown site creating new jobs and improving local shopping choice”.

According to planning documents submitted to the city council in January, 2023, the proposals are expected to create around 60 full-time equivalent jobs and other “spin-off employment”.

This includes local businesses and others in the supply chain, and construction employment associated with the development.

A planning and retail statement submitted to council officials noted the plans would provide more than 160 parking spaces,as well as pedestrian links, cycle parking and electric vehicle chargers.

Developers, in a design and access statement, also confirmed a service yard had been positioned to the rear of the proposed Home Bargains store, to help “minimise the impact” on neighbours.

Under planning conditions, the development must be brought forward within three years.

Home Bargains, based in Merseyside, operates more than 500 stores and employs more than 22,000 staff, with ambitions to grow to 1,000 stores, employing more than 40,000 staff.