Tesco won't pay up £340k for city bypass

Supermarket giant Tesco is locked in a legal row after refusing to pay £340,000 in developer contributions towards the Inverness bypass.

The money is key to Highland Council’s £34.4 million plans to complete the A9/A96 link by building new bridges over the River Ness and Caledonian Canal and taking the controversial Option 6 route through Canal Park.

But Tesco insists that the agreement it signed in 2001 as part of planning consent for its Dores Road store had a 10-year deadline for completion of the road, meaning it expired in October 2011.

The local authority disagrees, insisting the agreement only covered phases three and four, which took the bypass to Dores Road, and not the final connection to the A82.

Both sides are reluctant to discuss the matter in detail, with Tesco declining to make any comment.

However, an email from senior council transport official Sam MacNaughton to colleagues and seen by The Inverness Courier confirms that the so called Section 75 agreement detailing the payment of £340,000 by Tesco was subject to the road being completed in 10 years.

It adds: "One for the solicitors to sort out. Depends on what the words say and maybe the intent at the time. They said their solicitors would be writing."

Yesterday, the local authority’s planning, environment and development committee chairman Thomas Prag believed it was a matter of interpretation. "It is down to the lawyers to untangle," he said. "It would be entirely inappropriate for me to make a comment while the lawyers are in discussions but the problem is the definition of what that 10-year time limit actually means."

Mr Prag acknowledged the council’s record on conditions around developers’ contributions had not always been good. He added: "We now have somebody full time who works on those agreements because previously the council was not always terribly aware of what they had actually taken the money for and why. We are much better about that now."

A council spokesman confirmed the legal agreement with Tesco would have been drawn up by council officers at the time.

"The £340,000 has not been paid, we are actively reviewing where we go from here," he said, adding that discussions with Tesco were continuing and lawyers were looking into the matter.

The Inverness West Link, the final stage of the bypass, has proved highly divisive and it was recently revealed that costs were going up by around £270,000 a month, prompting campaigners to call for a rethink of the controversial route.

Yesterday John West, chairman of Inverness Civic Trust which favours a tunnel or a high level bridge, both of which would leave recreation land intact, described the wrangle with Tesco as baffling.

He questioned why the council agreed to a 10-year-deadline on the payment.

"I’m curious to know why that was done," he said. "It was not going to be finished by 2011 so it seems to be a rather strange condition to be held to."