§ Mr. VazTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many times in each year since 1979 he has called in out-of-town retail developments. [17068]
§ Sir Paul BeresfordThere is no information available for out-of-town retail development, or for retailing generally, back to 1979, but for the past six years the number of retail applications called in were:
- 1990: One
- 1991: 21 of which 10 were covered by one inquiry and eight others were covered by three inquiries
- 1992: 9
- 1993: 10
- 1994: 34 of which nine were covered by two inquiries
- 1995: 44 of which 21 are covered by three inquiries.
These figures include "twin-track" applications—multiple applications for different proposals for the same site, and applications for overlapping sites. Most of these were for out-of-centre locations.