A campaign to fight off plans for a new drive-through in a residential area have been given renewed hope of success after council planning chiefs rejected a similar application.
Recent applications for drive through venues in Glasgow have seen a groundswell of opposition, including two applications to build car-centric cafes in the Gorbals area of the city.
Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain, lodged an application for a drive-through on Crown Street, to take over part of a car park behind a shopping mall, which was approved around five years ago.
To residents’ relief, the plans were never progressed, although an application to vary that existing consent remained live.
READ MORE: Glasgow regeneration boss pledges change is coming for the city
A subsequent application to create a Starbucks drive through on the same site has attracted dozens of objects from locals, community organisations and politicians.
Now locals have been sent letters from Glasgow City Council confirming the initial planning application has been refused.
While the second application, for the Starbucks, is still pending, residents are hopeful this refusal makes it unlikely the new drive through plans will go ahead.
One local resident told The Herald: “My flat neighbours the Crown Street retail park and it’s already busy with cars driving down to the shopping centre and the nearby health centre.
“The surrounding road is a large artery taking people around to the M74 motorway and we also still get a lot of commuters trying to park here and travel on into the city centre - so it’s constant traffic all the time.
“There was very little objection to the first planning application, which was approved, I think because people didn’t really know it was happening or really see the effects of having drive throughs in the community.”
The area is already flanked by drive through restaurants: there is a Starbucks drive through a few minute’s away, a drive through Costa coffee shop and a drive through Burger King.
She added: “Now the other retail park has opened with its new drive throughs, the area is saturated and people are fed up.
“That was why there was pushback this time.
“I was so pleased to see the letter from the council - I had to read it twice.
“You don’t want to get over excited but surely they can’t approve the most recent application now they have refused the older one?
READ MORE: Majority of Glasgow's night buses saved after companies join forces
“This feels like good news.”
Glasgow has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the country yet is home to the largest number of drive-through restaurants in the UK.
Glasgow City Council planners have approved around 50 so-called drive-thrus across the city with 10 new applications lodged since 2019.
However, the situation has become of increasing frustration to residents who say the facilities do not serve their communities and instead increase congestion, air pollution, littering and go against the city’s planning framework to promote walking and cycling.
Scottish Government planning policy states that all local authority decisions should be made while keeping the 2045 net zero target in mind but plans for drive throughs continue to be submitted across Scotland - despite increasing public pushback to the plans.
Last year the Scottish Greens called for a moratorium on drive throughs in Glasgow, given the particularly high numbers in the city - more than Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee combined.
Euro Garages Ltd lodged the new application to develop the Crown Street car park into a drive through cafe The existing Tim Hortons planning consent - which has now been refused - was granted in January 2018 but did not expire after the standard three year period due to extensions automatically applied during the pandemic.
Euro Garages submitted an application to vary that existing consent to build a Starbucks, which said the changes are “relatively modest”.
This has now been refused by city planners.
Among the objections to the new Starbucks plans was a complaint from Gorbals Parish Church that “there is a low incidence of car ownership meaning this will not be of benefit to the local community.”
The church also raised concerns that an increase in traffic “in the low car-owning area” would “endanger the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.”
Another fear is emissions from idling cars waiting to be served and at the traffic lights, which would pose a “health concern” in an area with a “high incidence of respiratory diseases”.
READ MORE: Christopher Harkins to stand trial over range of alleged offences against women
The statement lodged on behalf of Euro Garages said the principle of the development has been “established” as duplicated plans were approved about five years ago.
The statement said: “The proposed development duplicates the nature of the extant permission, thus it is considered that the principle of a Class 3 café with drive-thru facility on the application site has already been established.”
But these plans have now been refused.
Residents in the Thornwood area of Glasgow launched a full scale attack against new drive throughs in their community - even appealing to Joe Biden to intervene when he visited Glasgow for COP26 last year.
But their efforts were to no avail and the plans, for a Burger King and a Starbucks, were approved.
Glasgow City Council was approached for comment and said the current application is current application is under discussion.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here