Auction mart move scheme up before South Lakeland planning (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Auction mart move scheme up before South Lakeland planning

4:10pm Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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A CONTROVERSIAL scheme to relocate an auction mart out of Kendal to a more rural location is set to go before planning bosses next week.

The owners of Kendal Auction Mart are looking to move from their Appleby Road location to a site at Crooklands.

The application for the new mart will go before South Lakeland District Council’s planning committee on March 25.

It is not yet known what the recommendations will be.

Meanwhile, around 75 residents in the Crooklands area wree at a public meeting, at the Crooklands Hotel, to voice opposition to the scheme.

Spokesman John Dootson, of Deepthwaite, said ‘major’ concerns were raised about traffic, should the mart be relocated in Crooklands.

“There is a huge amount of local opposition because a private company is trying to get a building built on a landscape of county importance on a greenfield site,” he said.

Mr Dootson said it was feared that a mart at Crooklands would bring high volumes of traffic down narrow back lanes in the area.

“If you put that area into a sat nav system when you are coming from the Ulverston direction you are brought along all of the local single-track roads and that is of great concern to people in outlying villages,” he said.

However, John Geldard, director of Kendal Auction Mart, said 98 per cent of visitors to the mart would not be using sat nav.

"I hear what the residents are saying about traffic but when you look at the logistics it does not stack up."