Jobs in the balance as depot site is rejected

The managing director of Littlehampton-based Euroxpress revealed he would more than likely have to shut up shop after the council threw out his plan to convert the old pumping station, in Ferry Road, into a new depot. However, the only reason the company was forced to hunt for a new site in the first place was because Arun approved plans as part of the major North Littlehampton development, which led to Euroxpress being evicted by its landlord from its long-standing premises in Toddington Lane. Matthew Lock, head of Euroxpress, said it was a crushing blow and he felt his impassioned plea to councillors fell on deaf ears. “We’re closing up,” he said after the development control meeting last Wednesday. “It means Littlehampton’s biggest removal company will have to close. “We were moved to make way for housing, that’s why we were evicted. It sickening.” Euroxpress had been searching for two years to find a new base, since planning permission was granted for the town’s largest housing development in a generation. But Mr Lock said there was simply nowhere else for them to go, be it in Arun or the Adur and Worthing districts. Arun’s cabinet member for planning, councillor Ricky Bower, who voted in favour of officer’s recommendations to refuse the application, said he wasn’t convinced. “I am obviously sympathetic to the needs of the company and the need to retain the employment that they offer but this is the wrong site. I am not convinced that the company has exhausted all other potential sites.” However, Arun’s business development manager, Miriam Nicholls, said this was not the case. She told the committee: “I have scoured the district to find a site for this company and I simply cannot find one.” She claimed industrial estates were not suitable and described Euroxpress as ‘a small business which is ripe for expansion, the sort of company that we want here’. The old pumping station was ‘ideal’ and had ‘met all the criteria for the expansion outside the built-up area for economic reasons’, bringing ‘long-term use to a site with a somewhat chequered history’. “We shouldn’t lose a growing business in the district because they are slightly outside the built-up area boundary,” she added. The town council also gave its support to the plans. The committee voted by eight to five to accept planning officers’ recommendation to refuse planning permission. Littlehampton Ham ward councillor Mike Northeast was one of those who backed the application, saying it would help to provide jobs in Littlehampton. Rustington West councillor Ray Steward agreed. Committee chairman Jacqui Maconachie pointed out the application was retrospective and said the removals depot would infringe on the strategic Climping gap.