Our town is a very nice town

THE online community newspaper for Nailsea people, their family and their friends

www.thetekhut.uk
computer techies for the online community

The TEK Hut was started by Ben Parker in the summer of 2018.

For 12 years Ben had been one of the team at The ICT Workshop which provided a wide variety of computer services to Nailsea, Clevedon, Yatton, Backwell and even Weston-Super-Mare. 

Ben felt it right to continue the same great service customers had previously experienced but under new branding for a new business and The Tek Hut was born.

​Trading at the familiar location in Nailsea, The Tek Hut will continue to offer the same cost effective, new laptops and PCs, upgrades, onsite support for homes and businesses through to a wide range of workshop services and accessories.

Exciting plans to bring Aldi to Nailsea have been scuppered by a car park row.

Wraxall businessman Paul O’Brien who already had planning permission for 40 apartments on the site hoped to enhance the town centre with new plans to include a ground floor budget supermarket, first floor community hub and the 40 apartments above.

This was all to be built on the derelict former Weston College/health centre site which has stood empty for eight years.

The scheme would happen after the library moved to the old HSBC retail unit in Colliers Walk this summer - which is going ahead whatever is changed - and relocating the separate toilet block facing the car park to inside the new food store.

But Mr O’Brien claims just before he was poised to submit a detailed planning application to North Somerset Council the owners of Crown Glass Shopping Centre asked for hundreds of thousands of pounds upfront in a one-off payment to share the car park.

The car parking is crucial to get planning permission for the retail/housing project.

Mr O’Brien, whose company is called Development Bristol, said: “We were looking at a large 19,000sq ft food store on site with 40 flats above it – I came to an agreement with landlords Praxis to pay a very substantial sum to use its car park but they wanted the money upfront.

“I am reluctant to do this without first obtaining planning permission which if it isn’t granted then, obviously, I don’t need the car park.

“I was told they had to have the payment beforehand which I think is ridiculous.”

Mr O’Brien said he had no other choice but to go back to his original set of drawings submitted last year to build just the multi-storey apartment block and hopes this project will get underway within the next few weeks.

Mr O’Brien said: “It has been two years since we bought the site and I really don’t want to wait much longer.

“Nailsea Town Council were in favour of the store scheme and having a 2,000sq ft hub for community use on the first floor.”

Mr O’Brien said his Aldi scheme is close to collapse because of the car park stalemate with Praxis.

He added: “It’s a shame, I told Praxis I was happy to pay subject to planning permission otherwise it is pointless.

“No one is going to pay for the car park use without planning permission for the bigger scheme.”

He said he had intended to also purchase the old petrol station to include a road by Domino Pizzas for delivery lorries, and to increase footfall throughout the shopping centre it was agreed to make the main access to the Aldi store from Somerset Square.

Property management company Praxis would have saved maintenance costs on the car park and the toilets which had been repeatedly vandalised, he said.

A partnership has already been agreed with Bromford Housing Association who are committed to ‘provide affordable homes for people who can’t access market housing’.

This will go ahead as will the purchase of the library site, he added.

Council planners had wanted the original planning application cancelled and all hopes were put on this new scheme with Aldi.

Mr O’Brien said: “Luckily I refused and permission for this was granted otherwise the town would have had nothing apart from the derelict building for a few more years.”