We attach below an emailed response from the Coop development manager

Dear Cllr,

Thank you for your recent letter – I hope you don’t mind me replying via E mail rather than a paper letter. The Co op is committed to being as sustainable as possible and as such E mail is our preferred method of communication.

As you say we are hoping to bring the Bridge of Allan community a new and improved food store on the site of our existing store which as you will be aware is not providing the community, our members and colleagues with the best possible shopping  and working environment. 

We very much want to hear the views of all sections of the community and it is our intention to consult with the entire community including of course the Parish and Community Councils.

Before we do this however we need to first speak with the Council’s Planning and Highways Officers as they represent the Local Planning Authority (LPA). Our first point of contact has to be with the professional Officers for two reasons.

Firstly it would be disrespectful not to observe the proper order of things in this matter and to do this we need to speak with the LPA first. That is not to say the LPA are more important than other stakeholders but they are the decision makers in planning terms and we would always speak to them in the first instance.

Secondly it would serve no purpose to consult the wider community on proposals that the LPA would not accept. For example if the Highways officers deemed a proposal to be dangerous it would be pointless to present these proposals to the community as the plans could never come into fruition without satisfying Highways Officers.

That is not to say that all the views of all stakeholders are not  equally important and we certainly would not be presenting proposals to the Parish and Community Council’s as a “done deal”.  We would welcome their views and input.

We have to take the views of all parties into account and to do this we will organise consultation events for the whole community including the Community and Parish Councils to input into our proposals. We will be taking steps to organise this once our discussions with Officers are complete and we look forward to hearing the views of all stakeholders.

Thanks

Chris Beebe

Regional Planning Manager (North/Scotland/NI/IOM)

Group Property