Stop Lidl Lewes

All from Lidl's own application documents.

A previous Lidl application on this site (SDNP/25/01871/FUL) was refused by the National Park Authority on 12 December 2025, for three reasons: design and heritage harm; not enough information on noise; and no legal agreement (relocation support for the existing businesses and contributions for buses, air quality and the town centre).

The new scheme:

• a store of 2,267 m², with a sales floor of 1,492 m²;
• 106 car parking spaces;
• a building up to about 9.9 m high;
• opening hours on the application form of 8am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday (the Transport Assessment says a 7am opening);
• deliveries sought from 7am to 11pm.

Traffic. About 2,150 vehicle trips on a weekday and 2,250 on a Saturday, by Lidl's own figures.

Jobs. Lidl claim “40 jobs”. The application form shows 5 full-time and 35 part-time staff (about 23 full-time equivalent), replacing 18 existing full-time jobs on the site.

Flooding. The site is almost entirely in Flood Zone 3.

The footpath is a separate legal process from the planning application. East Sussex County Council made the Order to add Public Footpath Lewes 60 across the site on 31 July 2026 (reference RWO 330). The Council confirmed it on 2 October 2026.

None of Lidl's application documents mentions the footpath or the Order, other than the application form, where Lidl answer yes to “Do the proposals require any diversions/extinguishments and/or creation of rights of way?”

We have overlaid the Order route on Lidl's own proposed site plan (drawing PL-103). The route runs through the lorry turning and service area, clips the north-east corner of the store (about 5 m of the route's centre line falls inside the building), and crosses the car park. Accuracy is about ±0.5 m.

Planning permission cannot remove a public right of way. That needs a separate legal order.

More on the Right of Way page.

Comment to the South Downs National Park Authority, quoting SDNP/26/03583/FUL, using the comment link on the application page. There is no closing date: the Authority accepts comments until the day the application is decided, so the sooner the better.

Write in your own words. A short personal letter carries more weight than a copied template. Pick one to three points you care about.

Stick to planning reasons, such as:

• harm to the Conservation Area and listed buildings;
• noise and disturbance to neighbours;
• flood risk;
• loss of the footpath;
• traffic and safety;
• light pollution in the Dark Sky Reserve;
• loss of employment land;
• harm to the town centre.

Loss of a private view, property values and competition between shops are not planning reasons.

Lidl's own consultation claims 509 “yes” replies out of 858. A large number of individual objections is the answer to that.

For a worked example, the policy numbers to quote, where to send your comment and what not to say, 10 reasons to object (two-page A4 handout, PDF).

There are significant changes from the previous scheme. The store building has been repositioned and the site layout extensively redesigned, and the plans show new pedestrian connections into the site, including what Lidl label a “connecting footpath” from Malling Street. However, it is important not to read more into these preliminary plans than they actually tell us.

There are aspects of the redesign which appear to address criticisms of the previous application, and we should acknowledge improvements where they have genuinely been made. There are also important things we simply cannot assess yet.

A preliminary site plan cannot tell us, for example, exactly how the boundaries adjoining neighbouring properties will be treated; where plant and other equipment will be positioned; what the noise implications will be; what landscaping and screening will actually consist of; or all the detailed consequences for traffic, pedestrians, heritage, employment land and neighbouring amenity.

The leaflet states that, apart from design, neighbour amenity and heritage, “all other matters including the principle of retail use on the site were confirmed as acceptable”. That is Lidl's characterisation of the December 2025 refusal. It is important to understand that any new application is determined afresh, on its own evidence and against the policies applying at the time it is being assessed.

We therefore don't think it is useful to undertake significant detailed analysis before seeing the actual planning application and its supporting documents.

Lidl have invited people to comment directly to them on their proposals. People are, of course, entirely free to do that, and Lidl may take those comments into account before submitting its application.

However, responding to Lidl’s consultation is not the same thing as making a representation on a planning application. Comments sent directly to Lidl are comments to the developer, not representations to the planning authority. The important opportunity to comment from a planning perspective comes after Lidl submits its planning application, when the South Downs National Park Authority carries out the statutory consultation on the application.

So, if you want your views to be considered when the planning application is determined, you will need to submit them to the planning authority once the application is open for public comment.

Since Lidl's previous planning application, East Sussex County Council has made Definitive Map Modification Order RWO 330, following an application to record the public footpath across the site on the Definitive Map. This is an important development, but the process is not finished. The Order has been made, but it has not yet been confirmed. If objections are made and not withdrawn, the Order cannot simply be confirmed by the Council and will have to proceed through a statutory process involving the Planning Inspectorate, which can take many months.

From the preliminary material available to us, the pedestrian route shown in Lidl's new design does not appear to follow the alignment of RWO 330. It is also worth noting that neither the letter nor the leaflet mentions the Order, or a public right of way, at all. We also do not yet know Lidl's legal position on RWO 330. Lidl can design a scheme which makes some allowance for a possible right of way while still objecting to the Order and denying that the public right exists.

Equally, providing an alternative pedestrian route on a planning drawing does not itself move or extinguish a public right of way. If RWO 330 is ultimately confirmed on its present alignment, changing or extinguishing that right would require a separate legal process.

Please see the Right of Way page for more details.