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Are two of Inverness’s biggest retailers set to move? A new planning application certainly appears to be suggesting so.
A certificate of lawfulness application has been lodged that has raised questions over the futures of Home Bargains and Sports Direct’s current city centre locations.
The application, lodged with Highland Council, is seeking to more than double the retail space inside one of the units of the Rose Street Retail Park.
The application, lodged by the company which owns the Rose Street Retail Park, is aiming to install a mezzanine floor within the large open space contained above the unit’s existing suspended ceiling.
A certificate of lawfulness is a type of planning notice issued for works which do not require full planning permission. In the case of these proposals for a new mezzanine floor, the work – if signed off – will be entirely internal and there will be no material changes to the external structure of the building.
The unit highlighted in the documents is currently the home of a Home Bargains store.
And the drawings feature multiple mentions of the companies Frasers Group and Sports Direct. Frasers Group owns multiple UK brands, including Sports Direct.
The application is therefore sure to spark speculation as to the futures of the current Sports Direct store at Unit 1, Strothers Lane, and the Home Bargains store within the Rose Street Retail Park.
The latter is currently the only Home Bargains store in the city, but this is set to change within weeks – with a brand new outlet opening in Henderson Road in the Longman before the end of this month.
When it was seeking permission for that new Henderson Road store last year, Home Bargains’ owner TJ Morris, indicated that it planned to continue running its Rose Street site even after the new store began operation.
Its agent Savills, speaking on TJ Morris’s behalf in documents lodged with the planning application for the new Henderson Road store, said that it considers Inverness as large enough to be a “dual store city”.
Speaking then, Savills stated: “There is a Home Bargains located within Inverness city centre at Rose Street who intend to continue their operations within this location.
“The existing city centre store does not allow for an outdoor projects area / garden centre which demonstrates the requirement for a further unit to be provided within the Inverness area.
“Home Bargains envisage Inverness as a ‘dual store city’ given the ongoing success of their existing operations within the area.
“The new condition to allow Home Bargains to operate from the existing premises would not likely materially compete with existing retail operators within Inverness city centre.
“It follows that the proposed development will not materially alter either the number of visitors to the centre, or their reasons to visit them. Residents will continue to visit the centre for their wider retail, service, leisure and associated facilities and its wider cultural and tourist function, which would not be impacted upon at all by the proposed development.”
The possibility that Sports Direct might move into the existing Rose Street Home Bargains site appears to fly in the face of those remarks from a year ago.
However, a third Home Bargains store is planned in Stratton off Barn Church Road, raising the possibility that this might be considered one of the two stores in the company’s earlier comments about Inverness being considered a “dual store city”.
It would however, still appear to contradict the company’s earlier comments that the Rose Street store “intend to continue their operations within this location”.
Frasers Group and TJ Morris were both approached for comment about the mysterious certificate of lawfulness application and the future of their existing sites.
TJ Morris did not confirm or deny the speculation, with a spokesperson simply stating: “We have no comment at this time.”
Frasers Group had not replied at the time of publication.
If Sports Direct vacates its current premises – owned by Network Rail, which also owns nearby sites occupied by TK Maxx and the former Royal Mail sorting office – it may accelerate plans for train and bus stations becoming an integrated transport hub. This vision has been mooted for over a decade.
Network Rail was also asked to comment.
