Makro Apply For Longer Delivery Hours

June

24

17 comments

Makro have put in a planning to allow expended hours for deliveries, allowing the parking of delivery vehicles, and operating approved plant machinery outside the building.

The current permitted hours are :
0730 – 2100 hrs Monday to Friday
0730 – 1900 hrs on Saturday
0900 – 1730 hrs on Sunday

Makro want to alter that to:
0500 – 2200 hrs Monday to Saturday
0700 – 1900 hrs on Sunday

The application number is 14/00365/FUL and you can find it here.

If you have comments , make sure you submit to the council (you can do it via the link). But any thoughts here would also be welcome.

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  • Whilst this doesn’t directly affect me I feel sorry for the people in Rawreth Lane and the houses that back onto the Makro site if this goes ahead. It won’t be over pleasant for the people in the new houses should they ever get built either. Hardly a good selling point, big Cash and Carry with delivery lorries coming and going 17 hours a day virtually on the doorstep. I don’t really see it can be that necessary. Every time I go to Makro lately it’s like a ghost town in there it’s so quiet, surprised they can keep going with that level of custom really.

  • This will go through – the precedent has been set with ASDA who have deliveries from 7am to 11pm and their service yard in a lot closer to homes than Makros are at the moment (and the decision will be made on how it is now, not in the future)

  • Presumably both RDC planners and ECC Highways will take this large/ heavy/ regular extra loading on Rawreth Lane into account when approving the new Countryside estate junction ( just to the West ) based on the Easter Weeked traffic survey? – and
    by the way just a plain old T junction no doubt.
    In fact at the Countryside roadshow they said Phase 1 of the building will use the Rawreth Ind Estate existing road – so Macro traffic increase plus large/ heavy/ regular Construction traffic too , get your planning objections ready folks.

  • How much extra traffic will be created by changing delivery hours? There is only a finite amount of storage space at Makro, and there is no indication that the number of lorries will change. This could very well be a logistical request to give longer hours for the same number of deliveries that currently happen to occur within.

    I have to say off late this forum has become incredibly pessimistic!

  • Cjav, very much take your point about pessimism. One reason for this is that there are so many localised problems accumulating – street lights, potholes, grass cutting etc. They are accumulating because ‘the council’ – whether county or district isn’t dealing with them properly.
    In my early years as a councillor , you hardly ever had to report a pothole. There just weren,t many. And you never had to report them twice.
    Also the core strategy obviously concerns many people, rightly.

    The most difficult question I was asked in the election campaign was by a very young lady whose parents read onlineFOCUS, it was on the lines of ‘what would you most like to do to improve Rayleigh?’ I really had to think -We spend so much time trying to get problems sorted that we don,t think positively enough.

    I would love to report more positive stuff – we have some great people living here, and I love this town. A good start would be a big turn out in Sweyne Park on Sunday. In the longer term , we need more people to get involved in the politics of our towns and villages. We need new blood on our councils to give a more optimistic feel. And new ideas,. And we need to drag RDC away from its bunker mentality, which at the moment means concentrating all the power in the council cabinet and avoiding public meetings.

  • Richard lambourne@5 – yes, it may spread out the deliveries rather than increase them. But, do you want to live next door to a site that has large delivery lorries and associated fork lift trucks etc. beeping away from 5am in the morning to 10pm at night.

  • Christine

    Been there and done it we used to live adjoining Brook Road Industrial estate. Had many run ins with factories and the council.

    Moved away so no problem !!!

  • I only found out about this by chance today and I am a little worried. My house looks out onto the fields so anything turning into the Makro road I can hear and see…usually the Amber school buses and skip trucks. I can see why they are doing this…sneaky in my opinion…get in before the new houses are built so people won’t be able to complain. It was the same with Asda who tried to increase their opening hours….no one is that desperate for broccoli they can’t wait until the next day!! Unlike Asda which is very close to houses, Makro is a bit further back, so I can’t see many opposing this plan, apart from maybe the odd few houses backing onto the site….if they know about it. To be fair, I don’t hear the delivery lorries often, let alone see them…however, I am usually up and about by 7.30am so don’t notice so much…how this would change at 5.30am when everything is a bit quieter, I can’t say. I still fail to understand why they need to deliver at 5 in the morning and until 10pm at night 6 days a week anyway…it’s just not necessary. As someone else has written, it’s always quiet when I’ve been in there and full of stock, so I don’t see any benefit. Maybe they want to deliver before traffic accumulates on Rawreth Lane? Also I worry about the infrastructure of extra lorries thundering along the road. My house is a fair way back from the road and when I’m in my bedroom if a lorry goes past my bed sometimes judders, which just goes to show the weight pressures the road has to cope with. I hope the Council sees sense and rejects this application. The only thing that has changed since 2006 when the Council had the restrictions imposed, is that the road has got busier….and will be even more so, once the new houses and “non cut through, cut through” start to appear.

  • Julie, if you are worried about it go onto the Council website (click the red here at the end of the original post which will take you straight to the application) and object against it. You can object on the grounds of traffic, noise, early morning disturbance etc.

  • Absolutely correct on all levels – ” only found out by chance ” rings a bell , “before the new houses are built ” probably right and of course the 1st phase of new housing will be using the Makro road for Construction traffic entry and exit too – but the big question for a planning objection is – not necessary ?.

  • Julia, when you say you found out only by chance, was that via onlinefocus or from another source?

    Also, when restrictions were placed on the hours, the reason for this was specifically stated to be “to enable the Local Planning authority to retain adequate control over such hours of use, in the interests of residential amenity.”

    As most onlinefocus readers will know, district councillors have to stay neutral in advance of any planning meetings. However one factor that has to be considered is that the building may not always be used by Macro, and also that Countryside are considering having another commercial use nearby. Allowing longer hours at Macro would set a precedent for the future.

  • The last few times I visited Macro’s, their shelves has been increasingly empty and business looks poor. So I wonder why they want longer hours now?

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