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by Lib Dem team on 6 May, 2013
If you judge the health of a centre by the number of vacant units (and that does seem to be the measure of choice these days), Gatley is looking pretty healthy.
On a walk through the village, I counted seven empty “shopfronts”:
I’ve not worked out the percentage, but I think it’s about 10% vacant units. That puts Gatley in line with other local villages such as Cheadle, Marple and Bramhall, and well below the national average vacancy rate.
Balance is needed for any centre to thrive. Clearly Gatley is able to support quite a number of takeaways, but I do think having more would start unbalancing the village as they tend not to trade in the day-time. We have a really good range of businesses in Gatley, from the small supermarkets, butchers and bakers to cater for our everyday needs, to great specialist shops like Vintage Belle Candles on Buxton Street and an increasing range of cafes, coffee shops and restaurants.
I’d like to thank all the small businesspeople and traders who work so hard to make their businesses, and Gatley village, successful. We all recognise that running a small business is never easy and there are always challenges around the corner!
2 Comments
I can’t understand why the council is willing to even consider yet another Indian takeaway in Gatley village, on the site of the Nat West Bank. A restaurant would be so much better…something similar to Piccolo’s, which is bringing life back into the village…a bit of nightlife to draw people out locally…..not another drab, half empty takeaway.
It’s because Planning law doesn’t work that way – the law says (and has done for more than 60 years) that any planning application has to be improved unless there are good reasons to refuse it. Those reasons have to be written into the national or local planning policy.
Right now, we don’t have any policy that says you can’t convert a village centre bank into a takeaway (though there may be other reasons to object to the takeaway).
Pam King and I did propose a change to policy which would prevent it, and that change should come into force soon, but at the moment it isn’t in the rules.