A FIFTH supermarket for Wellington was this week given planning permission, with the Aldi store expected to be open for business as early as next year.

Although aimed at serving mostly customers from the Wellington and Rockwell Green area, the store will actually be in West Buckland parish.

Aldi is expected to start construction later this year on the site off the A38 relief road roundabout at the entrance to the Westpark 26 business park and bordered by the Chelton to M5 motorway link road.

Somerset Council planning officer Paul Sherman used delegated powers to approve the plans on Tuesday (March 24) without allowing councillors to discuss the application in public.

Mr Sherman said the £7 million, 14,000 sq ft food store was located in the countryside outside Wellington’s development boundary, but the land had been designated for employment use.

He said the original intended occupier of the site no longer wanted to use it, therefore in principle there was no planning objection to the Aldi application.

Mr Sherman said: “The development would not materially impact on the viability or vitality of the surrounding retail centres and there are no sequentially preferable sites in the local area.”

He said landscaping would ensure the single-storey supermarket integrated well into the landscape, there would not be any impact on residential amenity, and it did not give rise to any highway safety concerns.

Hundreds of letters of support for the store were received by the planning department, but Mr Sherman said many were ‘duplicate or standardised responses’ generated automatically by people simply clicking a button on Aldi’s public consultation website.

Mr Sherman said: “Notwithstanding that, there are a greater number of representations in support, rather than objecting.”

Neither West Buckland parish nor Wellington town councillors had any objections to the Aldi store.