Tesco Superstore opens in Calne

This morning Tesco opened its new superstore in Calne, which is exciting news for our town. My family and I visited during the evening and found it to be busy with customers enjoying the new store. We overheard from a staff member that it had been consistently busy the entire day!

There is a lot in the store, yet it feels open (and pretty darn posh!). Everything you would expect is available from food to magazines, homeware and clothes to mobile phones. There's also a small cafe and a petrol station. The car park seems to be laid out well, with easy access into the car park and back out onto Beversbrook Road.

Most of the 200 permanent jobs are reported to be taken by local people[1], with an additional 40 jobs created for the Christmas period. The staff were organised, friendly and seemed relaxed - which is brilliant for such a busy first day.

As we follow a vegan diet, I imagine that we'll do a lot of shopping in this new Tesco as we've found in the past that they offer a good range of food options. But it's about feel too, I like the external timber cladding and inside the store feels light and welcoming, even on what was a dark and cold evening. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to returning in daylight when the crowds have settled down to get a better feel for the place. Welcome Tesco!


Now for some of the history of this project:

The original plans for the store had been approved by Wiltshire Council back in November 2013 (from the original submission submitted in July 2012[2]), but then Tesco began closing stores, due to the chain reporting an overstatement of profits in 2014. It wasn't until January 2015[3] that Tesco confirmed that the site on Beversbrook Road would still go ahead as planned.

Mango Planning and Development on behalf of Tesco submitted new plans to update on the planning conditions in February 2017[4] and development of the store happened very quickly. It was quite astonishing that these buildings can be erected so quickly, surely due to the materials used. Hard to believe that it was only last weekend (25-26 November) that we saw the tarmac lorries going in to lay the car park!


References:
[1] http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/15688760.Tesco_superstore_in_Calne_opens_its_doors_on_Thursday/?ref=mr&lp=1
[2] http://planning.wiltshire.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/Generic/StdDetails.aspx?PT=Planning%20Applications%20On-Line&TYPE=PL/PlanningPK.xml&param0=746760&XSLT=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Wiltshire/xslt/PL/PLDetails.xslt&FT=Planning%20Application%20Details&PUBLIC=Y&XMLSIDE=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Wiltshire/Menus/PL.xml&DAURI=PLANNING
[3] http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/11720801.Tesco_stands_by_planned_new_store_in_Calne/
[4] http://planning.wiltshire.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/Generic/StdDetails.aspx?PT=Planning%20Applications%20On-Line&TYPE=PL/PlanningPK.xml&param0=872874&XSLT=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Wiltshire/xslt/PL/PLDetails.xslt&FT=Planning%20Application%20Details&PUBLIC=Y&XMLSIDE=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Wiltshire/Menus/PL.xml&DAURI=PLANNING