Henley Aldi plan: town council recommends refusal

Henley Town Council has told South Oxfordshire District Council to refuse Aldi’s plan for a supermarket on Reading Road. Its objection was logged on the planning register on 28 August.

The council said it was satisfied with the principle of a store there. It objected on traffic, on delivery noise and on biodiversity, and said it was “disappointed that points raised during the pre-application had not been addressed”.

The district council’s own environmental health officer has separately warned of a “significant potential for Statutory Nuisance” from delivery and plant noise.

The public consultation runs until 19 September. A decision is due by 15 October.

What is actually being applied for

The application is P26/S2960/FUL, validated on 16 July 2026. It covers 99 Reading Road, RG9 1BY, the site Jewson builders merchants occupies now. Aldi Stores Limited is the applicant and Avison Young is its agent. The case officer is Nathaniel Bamsey.

From the application form and the agent’s covering letter:

• demolition of the existing buildings, then a Class E(a) discount foodstore of 1,848 square metres gross internal floorspace
• 1,282 square metres of that is tradable sales area
• the Jewson buildings being lost total 1,397 square metres, so the net gain is 451 square metres
• car parking goes from 25 spaces to 90, plus 5 disabled bays and 28 cycle spaces
• Jewson employs 13 people on the site; Aldi says a new store generally employs around 40, full and part time

The hours applied for are 8am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, including bank holidays, and 9am to 6pm on Sundays. The agent notes that Sunday trading law limits the store to six hours, typically 10am to 4pm.

On deliveries, the covering letter says the store expects an average of four HGV deliveries a day. Three are articulated lorries from Aldi’s regional distribution centre. The fourth is a milk delivery from a local supplier in a medium goods vehicle, arriving before or as soon as possible after opening.

What the town council said

Henley Town Council’s response is recorded on the register as an objection, with the comment “Recommend refusal”. Its stated reasons were:

• traffic on Reading Road, “which is already congested”, and the need for the Highway Authority to be satisfied with the access arrangements and wider highway implications
• delivery and plant noise on neighbouring properties, requiring either a proper noise assessment with mitigation or restricted delivery hours
• that the application does not deliver the full 10 per cent biodiversity net gain on site
• a request for additional tree planting within the car park to increase canopy cover
• that the matters raised by Network Rail should be addressed

The council added that if the application goes to South Oxfordshire’s planning committee, it will make representation there.

The noise objection is the sharpest one

Martin Morgan, environmental health officer at South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils, filed his comments on 25 August. He has no objection to the development in principle.

He does not accept that the applicant’s noise report, prepared by Noise Solutions Ltd on 29 June 2026, has adequately dealt with plant and delivery noise. He accepts that deliveries have to fall outside opening hours so lorries can get in safely. His view is that the noise from those deliveries has not been sufficiently mitigated to prevent future complaints, and that there is significant potential for statutory nuisance.

If the application is approved, he recommends either a more robust noise mitigation strategy or a planning condition restricting delivery hours. He has also asked for more detail on the proposed three-metre acoustic screen, because the plans do not specify how it would be built or how much noise it would actually cut.

Thames Valley Police want a security strategy

Kevin Cox, designing out crime officer at Thames Valley Police, responded on 1 September. He found the design and layout generally acceptable, but said the application contains no information at all on crime prevention, security measures or site management.

He identified the customer car park as the point of greatest vulnerability, listing theft from vehicles, criminal damage and, after dark, antisocial behaviour and nuisance vehicle use. He has asked for a security and crime prevention strategy before permission is granted, covering CCTV coverage, external lighting levels, intruder alarms, building security and access control, and proposed three planning conditions to secure it.

The ecology officer has asked Aldi for missing figures

The council’s own ecology team replied on 4 September, the newest response on the file. Dr Phil Chapman, senior ecology officer, did not object. He logged the response as a comment, headed “minor clarification on biodiversity net gain needed”.

He reviewed the applicant’s Ecological Impact Assessment, prepared by Tyler Grange and dated 24 June 2026, and generally agreed with it that most ecological impacts are unlikely. His one problem is with the paperwork behind the biodiversity figure:

• the site has no condition assessments for its area habitats, meaning the individual trees and the modified grassland
• section 4.3 of the assessment says the justification sits in the metric file itself, and he reports that it does not appear to
• he has asked the applicant to supply the missing information so he can verify the site’s biodiversity baseline value

That baseline matters because it is the number the mandatory 10 per cent gain is measured against. Chapman records that the application is liable to demonstrate that 10 per cent under schedule 7A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Henley Town Council’s objection had said the scheme does not deliver the full 10 per cent on site.

Beyond that, he raised no objections. He said the risks to the retained watercourse, the retained trees, nesting birds and small animals during construction can all be handled by planning conditions, as can enhancements for protected species. Some of the proposed habitats qualify as significant onsite enhancements, which would have to be secured for 30 years through a legal agreement.

The council’s economic team backs the scheme

Not every response is negative. The district council’s economic development team wrote on 20 August raising no objection on economic grounds. Its points were:

• around 40 net operational jobs, plus temporary construction work
• a discount food offer “that is not currently available in the town”
• the applicant’s retail assessment concludes most trade would be diverted from Tesco and Waitrose rather than from independent town centre shops
• Henley town centre currently shows the indicators of a healthy centre, including low vacancy and a strong retail, leisure and hospitality mix
• expenditure currently leaking to other towns could be retained in Henley

The team did caution that the council should still weigh the cumulative effect of trade diversion on Henley’s independents, cafes and hospitality sector.

Other consultees have cleared the scheme. The councils’ air quality team logged no objection on 17 August. Network Rail raised no objection in principle on 14 August, but attached asset protection requirements because the site adjoins the railway, including a minimum two-metre gap from its boundary fencing and an agreed method statement before demolition starts.

Thames Water wrote on 13 August with no objection on waste water network or sewage treatment capacity. It did flag that public sewers cross or run close to the site. A build over agreement is needed for works within three metres of a public sewer or one metre of a public lateral drain, and it asked for an informative requiring a groundwater risk management permit before any groundwater is discharged into the public sewer.

Most of the file is still blank

Fourteen consultees were written to on 11 August. Nine have not replied at all as of 4 September:

• Oxfordshire County Council, which holds the single highways response the town council said must be satisfied
• the Environment Agency
• the councils’ drainage team
• the forestry officer
• the heritage officer
• the landscape architect
• the urban design officer
• and the three Henley ward councillors consulted individually, Kellie Hinton, Ken Arlett and Stefan Gawrysiak

The highways silence is the significant one. Traffic on Reading Road is the most common objection from residents, the town council’s first stated reason for recommending refusal and the top concern in Aldi’s own pre-application survey, and the authority that rules on it has not yet said anything.

How the public has responded so far

The register’s comments tab records 118 in support, 24 objections and 4 neutral comments as of the evening of 4 September. Those totals move while the consultation is open.

The addresses filing letters of representation cluster on the streets nearest the site: Park Road, Upton Close, St Andrews Road, Grove Road and Reading Road itself.

Aldi ran its own consultation before applying, and reports the results in its statement of community involvement. These are the applicant’s figures, not the council’s:

• 2,152 leaflets distributed to addresses near the site
• a drop-in event at Henley Town Hall on 22 January 2026, 3pm to 7pm
• a comment period from 7 to 29 January 2026, drawing 853 responses
• 81.7 per cent supported the proposal, 12.5 per cent did not and 5.8 per cent were unsure
• the most common concern was the highway network, with Reading Road congestion raised by 91 respondents

What it means for you

You can still comment, and the deadline is 19 September. The register gives that as the consultation end date. The neighbour consultation letters expire on 8 September and the press advert on 12 September, but the register’s own end date is the later one. Comments go through the application page on the planning register.

Say something specific if you comment. Planning officers weigh material considerations such as highway safety, noise, amenity and design. Support or opposition on its own carries little weight; the traffic and delivery-noise points already on the file are the ones being tested.

The decision date to watch is 15 October. That is the register’s expiry date for determination, and it can move if an extension of time is agreed. The application is currently marked “Not Yet Recommended”, so it is not yet known whether it will be decided by an officer or go to the planning committee. Henley Town Council has said it will speak if it goes to committee.

If you live on Park Road, Upton Close or the Reading Road end of town, the delivery hours are the detail to read. Three articulated lorries a day plus a milk delivery, arriving before opening, is what the environmental health officer wants either better mitigated or restricted by condition.

Nothing changes at the site yet. Jewson is still trading there, and no permission has been granted. We track new applications on our Henley planning page, and current closures and disruption on Henley roadworks and travel.

Sources: South Oxfordshire District Council planning register, application P26/S2960/FUL, including the application form, the agent’s covering letter of 9 July 2026, the statement of community involvement, and the consultation responses from Henley-on-Thames Town Council (28 August 2026), the Environmental Protection team (25 August 2026), the Economic Development team (20 August 2026), Air Quality (17 August 2026), Network Rail (14 August 2026), Thames Water (13 August 2026), the Thames Valley Police designing out crime officer (1 September 2026) and the Ecology Team (4 September 2026), together with the register’s consultee and comments tabs as they stood on the evening of 4 September 2026.