PEOPLE have just days left to comment on plans for a cinema, hotel and supermarket development in Aldershot.

The Westgate plan, which will include a seven-screen Cineworld cinema, a Morrisons supermarket, restaurants, and a 91-bed Travelodge budget hotel, was submitted to planners on February 9.

People who either want to support or object to the plans have until Wednesday, March 24 to get their comments in to Rushmoor Borough Council planners.

Cllr John Marsh, chairman of the council's planning committee that will rule on the plans, said he was hoping that the application would be decided at a meeting at the council's Farnborough offices before the end of April.

Petitions

The application has proved controversial, with the owners of the Wellington Centre and Galleries shopping centres organising a campaign to try and stop it. They argue that another supermarket will suck crucial trade out of Aldershot town centre, where a fifth of shops are already empty.

But the scheme's supporters say that a new cinema and leisure facilities will revitalise Aldershot town centre, and the Morrisons supermarket will provide a welcome competition to the Tesco store that currently enjoys a monopoly over supermarket trade in the town.

Online petitions both for and against the scheme have already attracted thousands of signatures, with a petition supporting the application, organised by an Aldershot resident, attracting 1,142 signatures. Another petition, set up a the owners of the Wellington Centre, has attracted 45 signatures, although its organisers say hundreds more have been collected in person at shops in the town centre.

To sign either petition, or register your official support or opposition to the plans, click on the links on the right.

For more on this story, see the Aldershot News & Mail, out on Friday March 19.