Council to decide on Burger King at Cornwall petrol station

Motor Fuel Group (MFG) has applied for the outlet at Morrisons on Plymouth Road, Liskeard.

It has been recommended for approval by council planners, but the council member for the area, Cllr Kevin Grey, has requested the application is decided by the east area planning committee today (Monday, October 26) due to his concerns regarding highway impacts and the impact on the vitality and viability of the town centre.

Liskeard Town Council has previously objected to the application, also believing it would impact the town centre “and the likely increase in the number of vacant properties in the primary retail area”.

A design showing where the Burger King outlet would be situated in relation to the Morrisons store and petrol station (Image: Cornwall Council)

The town council added: “The development may give rise to an increase in car journeys and is not easily accessible for pedestrians. Furthermore, it may cause conflict with traffic accessing the filing station and create back-ups.”

The application seeks full planning permission for the construction of a single-storey food to go pod and associated works at the petrol filling station at the Morrisons supermarket. At present, the site is occupied by a jet wash bay.

Cornwall Council’s planning department says that a retail impact assessment concluded that the projected turnover resulting from the Burger King outlet “would be easily accommodated by local growth figures and that even if all the turnover was diverted from the town centre, the impact would not be significant. There would be no significant adverse impact on the vitality and viability of Liskeard town centre”.

Highways says that the proposal would lead to a “negligible difference” in vehicle movements to the site.

“Rather than generating additional, standalone visits, these movements will largely form part of multi-purpose trips, where the food to go is a secondary activity combined with fuel purchase or visit to the superstore," it states.

"As such, it is expected that the pod will be accommodated without materially increasing trips to the site.”

A Cornwall Council planning committee will decide this week if a Burger King ‘food to go pod’ can open at a supermarket petrol filling station. (Image: NQ)

MFG is the UK’s largest independent forecourt operator with more than 900 sites offering a dual-fuel strategy, convenient retail and food to go.

As part of MFG’s proposals to upgrade facilities across their portfolio of Morrison petrol filling stations they have already secured planning permission for a small extension to the filling station’s kiosk shop and a Greggs food to go facility.

A planning statement says: “They are now taking the opportunity to develop an additional hot food facility that would be operated by Burger King, to provide an improved offer to visiting motorists.

“It is not expected that it will function as a destination in its own right, rather it will serve the needs of motorists using the petrol filling station, which will be traffic passing by on the main road network and customers shopping at the Morrison.”