AN ALDI store will be coming to Pontypool, but a bus service for the supermarket will not be provided after negotiations broke down.

Councillors approved the terms of the approved store near the Skewfields roundabout after a lengthy debate about community transport contributions at a meeting on Tuesday.

As part of the development, Aldi has offered to pay £30,000 for canal bank repairs and has said a £70,000 footpath and cycleway will also be built.

But a further £25,000, originally offered as money towards community transport, will instead go towards improvements to footpaths between the site and Griffithstown.

A planning committee meeting heard attempts by planning officers to secure a bus service for the store were unsuccessful.

Aldi instead offered a £25,000 contribution towards community transport in Torfaen, but planning officers rejected the offer as they said it would be too small to provide any benefit.

However councillor Huw Bevan said he was ‘surprised’ that planning officers had turned down the ‘generous’ offer.

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He said: “It seems strange in these times where every penny counts that we are turning down an offer of £25,000 and we can’t seem to put that to use somewhere.”

But Paul Wheeldon, the council’s highways leader, said the authority would not be able to practically use the money.

Planners had wanted Aldi to negotiate with a transport operator to provide a permanent service, which would have taken people to the store from various residential areas.

Mr Wheeldon said the Aldi’s offer of £25,000 was a ‘sop’ - describing it as the store freeing itself of any obligation to provide “any decent transport.”

However councillor Gaynor James said the majority of people using the new supermarket would travel by car.

“The people that shop in the town will always shop in the town but those who have got a car bypass Pontypool and go somewhere else,” she said.

Councillors approved the store plan against the advice of planning officers in December, subject to terms being negotiated.

Councillor Richard Overton said he had been ‘naive’ to vote for the application, thinking Aldi would be obliged to provide public transport.

He said: “I thought the provision of a public transport facility could be a condition we could impose. I am quite disappointed that we are a paper tiger when it comes to this issue.”

Terms were approved, with an amendment that the £25,000 will go towards environmental improvements.