Masterplan dubbed 'recipe for dereliction' in centre of resort

The final version of the Bridlington area action plan is being drawn up before submission to the Secretary of State.

Under East Riding Council's plans, a larger version of the current Tesco store would be built on the council-owned coach park on Hilderthorpe Road and a new "shopping street" created on Quay Road.

The plans say that "Burlington Parade" "a major retail led and housing-led development" using land between the railway centre and the harbour will "create Bridlington's much-needed primary retail circuit".

Despite objections, shopping streets including the seafront, Prince Street and Cliff Street have been excluded from the new "primary shopping centre."

The document claims "market forces are already shift (sic) the focus of shopping to the west."

Coun Geoff Pickering, the new chairman of the Bridlington and Driffield local action team, says small retailers will be left "high and dry", while national stores shift to the new shopping centre half a mile away.

He said people needed to learn a lesson from Hull which saw the new Tesco-centred St Stephen's mall take off – but to the detriment of the Old Town, which had seen a sharp decline in footfall.

Coun Pickering, who works as a landscape architect, said: "I have been trying for three years to talk about the town centre and it was only a few weeks ago that they actually came out and acknowledged that they were going to ignore it altogether.

"I was told the plan for the town centre is market forces. What you are going to get is a lot of pound shops.

"For the town centre there are only aspirations such as a Winter Gardens on the harbour top.

"Regeneration isn't about knocking half the town down and rebuilding it, it's about creating opportunities for businesses to thrive and that's what's missing here."

Coun Pickering said he was also concerned about the lack of public involvement – citing just 53 responses from a consultation last year, of which only 22 were from members of the public. "Bear in mind this is a plan which allows the council to go forward with a compulsory purchase order on large numbers of properties and you have only 20 responses.

It indicates either something is seriously wrong with the consultation process or everyone in Bridlington thinks this is absolutely wonderful." A local businessman, who declined to be named, said he thought East Riding Council had "missed the point" with "grandiose" plans. He said no one was willing to invest in the large area which is down for regeneration.

He said: "What we have is a unique seaside attraction and really they should have played up to that instead of trying to create a huge retail park.

"To want to knock half the town down is almost Leninist. It looks like a charter for the big boys to move in and kill off local businesses."

Head of Bridlington Renaissance John Lister said some of the shops and amusements shut for six months over winter and "the feel of the place" needed to change to attract back the 30 per cent of shoppers who go to Hull or Scarborough.

He insisted the new retail park was not an out-of-town shopping centre and "virtually every form of media" had been used to inform people of the plans.

He said: "It doesn't mean all of a sudden the shops are closed – it changes planning policy to allow different things to happen in the future...

"The whole arrangement of the new area is to contact it to the existing area and make Chapel Street, King Street, work with the new shops."