Market town residents ‘support plan for small store on livestock market site’

Blueprints to build a new superstore on the Wentworth Street car park site have provoked widespread opposition amid concerns over the impact the multi-million pound scheme will have on the town’s independent traders.

Broadcaster Selina Scott, who lives nearby, has led a high-profile campaign to prevent the development becoming a reality. The scheme is due before Ryedale District Council on March 29, alongside rival proposals for a smaller food store on the site of the livestock market in a scheme put forward by the Fitzwilliam Estate.

Now the estate, which has owned much of Malton town centre for the past 300 years, says the responses put forward by residents in the run up to the planning meeting show a majority of residents are backing its plans.

Roddy Bushell, agent for the Fitzwilliam Malton Estate, said of 235 responses, 27 per cent of residents stated they were in favour of a new supermarket within the present Wentworth Street car park site, provided that a generous amount of car parking remains.

But out of 115 responses received about the smaller retail scheme planned at the livestock market, 73 per cent were in favour with a further 13 per cent in favour with some reservations.

“In the run-up to the planning committee, members have been sent a clear message,” he said. “The livestock market plan is something to be done for Malton, with its consent, as necessary and an improvement. The Wentworth Street superstore is something to be done to Malton, with its active condemnation, as both unnecessary and a blight on our beautiful and precious market town.”

Councillors from Ryedale District Council voted in 2010 to sell Malton’s Wentworth Street car park, after seven companies expressed an interest in developing the site.

GMI Holbeck, the developers behind the supermarket scheme, says it will help keep trade in Malton.