New jobs on way as opening date announced for Oswestry's second Aldi store

The store in Shrewsbury Road will open its doors to the public on December 10.

It will become the town's second Aldi store, operating alongside the existing shop in Oswald Road, which bosses say is operating at full capacity. There are no plans to close that store.

The company says that the new supermarket will create 40 jobs, comprising 25 full-time and 15 part-time roles.

Oswestry mayor Peter Cherrington said he was pleased to see more jobs created in the town and was looking forward to seeing the shop open.

"I'm very pleased to see Oswestry's economic growth continuing with a new store opening with additional employment for local people," he said.

"I think it's good to have new jobs on that side of town. I'm not an 'out of town' person generally because I'm always concerned about loss of business in the town centre, but a supermarket doesn't interfere with the town centre businesses that we already have."

The shop, next to the New Fairholme care home, was controversially granted planning permission in March amid protests over the demolishing of a former historic toll house to make way for the store.

Local campaigners tried to save the Gate House building, which was one of the Thomas Telford toll houses from a century ago, and even applied for the building to be listed. However, their listing appeal was turned down and an appeal to the Secretary of State was refused.

Shropshire Council's planning policy also came under fire from campaigners as the plans were passed by officers without going to committee to be heard by councillors.

The first thing Aldi developers did when they moved into the site was to demolish the Gate House, but the company has promised to install an interpretation board with historical photographs and information about toll houses to mark that one had stood on the site.

Despite the protests over the Gate House, more than 70 letters of support were submitted for the shop when it was in the planning consultation phase, with shoppers keen to have more choice and somewhere to buy food on the eastern edge of the town.

More recently planning permission was also granted for a Lidl store just a few hundred metres from the new Aldi.

Both are in Shrewsbury Road, throwing into doubt whether plans for a Morrisons superstore, also on the same road but closer to the Mile End roundabout, will ever be built.

Work ground to a halt on the Morrisons site, formerly the home of the town's livestock market, after demolition work was completed last year.

No-one from Morrisons available for comment.