LET us hope that the rematch at the district council's planning meeting of October 13, 2011, will prove decisive. For the second time, Tesco (and the council's own planning officers) were told by the planning committee that the visual appearance of the proposed Tesco store was paramount and not to be compromised.

I witnessed a fair and balanced opening assessment from local resident Mr Taylor rejecting the latest design with its minor changes. There were strong counter attacks from the both the town council (unfortunately) and Tesco's spokesperson. The planning committee then made it a 2-0 drubbing by rightly rejecting Tesco's pressures to accept their second modernistic design.

This was the second time that they had been told that only a traditional design which blends in with the rest of Coleford's architecture will do – when will Tesco (and the planning department) get the message?

From my point of view this was not just a local skirmish for Coleford but had much greater implications for the whole district's future. The planning committee correctly used the main policy – CSP 1 – from the new Core Strategy document, which is there to protect our area and environment. Our planners had singularly failed to use this most important and pivotal policy in its assessment to allow this Tesco design through.

To my mind, if this application had been passed, it would have been a failure of this new and much vaunted Core Strategy at its very first testing. The precedent it would have set against its primary policy would have left this document dead in the water, left our planners with egg on their faces and a difficult task ahead to fight any application on appearance and preservation of the local architecture and heritage.

We would be back in the uncaring 60s mix of designs and more gross mistakes to rival the Co-op blunder.

So, I hope that our planning committee will take the same care and regard with our other towns as well.?Bring on any appeal (as someone mentioned would now happen) – we will have to use the Core Strategy document to the best of its ability to protect the whole of our lovely rural district.

– Walt Williams, The Links, Coleford.