Review Supermarket Decision

the town will be left with no reason to go there for many people

Hertford really needs to keep Waitrose, it is a valuable asset to the town

Totally against this commercial abuse of the green belt by companies that should know better.

The LPA could quite easily have stipulated that Waitrose needs to retain a retailing presence in Hertford Town Centre boundaries for the duration that a store at the Van Hages site is open. It has been done to other supermarkets in other towns. The current store is incredibly outdated and surely it is only its convenient pedestrian location that encourages people to shop there, it's certainly not a wide retail offering, open airy store or convenient for car parking.

This development is detrimental to the town centres of Ware and Hertford and should be rejected

The proposal for a supermarket at the Van Hage out-of-town garden centre site contradicts all recent and current thinking regarding sustainability and the strengthening of town centres. Such thinking has been applied to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and current Waitrose in Hertford; Tesco and Asda in Ware; and Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Lidl and Asda in Hoddesdon. So why is the Van Hage/Waitrose application an exception? It would be a hugely regressive step to allow any supermarket to locate in this Green Belt ‘out of town’ location especially as it in turn jeopardises a valuable and sustainable ‘in town’ supermarket site at the heart Hertford.

Councils should be encouraging town centres rather than out of town shopping.

A supermarket built on green belt will destroy the local towns. It is also essential that one remains in Hertford otherwise it will become a ghost town.

It is important to keep a supermarket in the the centre of Hertford and not eat up the green belt.

I suspect Waitrose will lose more customers than they expect if they move from their present location. Many regular shoppers (like me) will reluctantly switch to Sainsbury's or Tesco.

Surely historic town centres should be the ones encouraged to thrive not a site miles from any town? Out of town shopping is environmentally unfriendly in many ways as well as unsuitable for those reliant on buses to get to the shops.

Completely irrational decision by local councillors when planning officers recommended the scheme for refusal. The move could devastate Hertford town centre and create traffic problems around Van Hages, completely against sustainable development principles.

Decision to grant permission for this application goes against policies on development in the Greenbelt and out of town shopping centres

Site totally unsuitable, plus we need to preserve Hertford as a county town, and not ruin green belt

There is simply no justification to create this new out of town superstore, particularly at a time when people want more convenience style shopping within towns. If this goes ahead it will be hugely detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the whole of Hertford Town Centre. The County Town of Hertfordshire should be a flourishing centre and moves like this to take a flagship store out of the town should be resisted.

Haven't Waitrose / Van Hage heard that 'out of town' big shopping is losing ground to small / more frequent shopping?

At the end of the day competition for the customer is an important ingredient in developing a healthy community. I agree that the local footfall might be not strong enough. In the time I have lived there I know the local councils are always against housing development. At times like these you need a diverse customer base living on your doorstep.

People without cars will simply go somewhere else, the heart of Hertford will implode, and it goes against all common sense to destroy the goodwill that Waitrose has justifiably built up in all those years.

We need to protect our town centres from losing more shops and our green belt being overly developed. The detrimental impact to our lifestyles should not be underestimated either.

Worried for the impact this would have for the smaller shops in the local area