While I am all in favour of Sainsbury's creating a store which will compete with Tesco's and give shoppers in Lynn a more serious choice of where to shop, I would appeal through your column to the local authority planning department, to ensure that proper thought is given to the chaos that will be created here on the Hardwick estate, the Hardwick Road and the Hardwick Roundabout if such a store is built without a major improvement to the road infrastructure on this side of the town.

I have been working on this industrial estate for 30 years and in that time it has become increasingly obvious that the roads on the estate are now inadequate for the vehicle movements and particularly the influx of very large continental lorries which move goods onto and off the Hardwick estate.

Last year saw one of the more crass planning decisions that I have witnessed on the estate in my years here, when the relevant Government department was given permission to build a new driving test centre at the junction of Oldmedow Road and Rollesby Road.

A huge sum of money has been spent on clearing the site and building on it, and those of us who work at this end of the estate await the traffic chaos that will undoubtedly ensue when the site is fully operational and the learner drivers are coming on and off the estate, presumably through both sets of access traffic lights at the rate of 300 to 400 vehicle movements per day.

The protests about this application fell on stony ground but I would hope very much that when the Sainsbury's application comes before the relevant authority, grave concerns are voiced as to how traffic will move in and out of the new superstore and traffic down the Hardwick Road and through the traffic lights at the end of Scania Way can be kept moving.

Nick Daubney as leader of our local council, must be delighted that Lynn is seeing such investment, but there will be little point if the whole town grinds to a halt!

NIGEL TOLLIT
Managing Director,
Tollit and Harvey.