WORK to build a discount supermarket on the outskirts of Ruthin is set to begin in the coming weeks.

Plans for the new Aldi store were given the go-ahead by Denbighshire County Council’s planning committee. The new 1,786 sqm store will be built on land off the A525 between the Farm Auction and Brickfield Lane in the town.

The German discount retailer also applied for permission for an employment unit and associated car parking, landscaping, servicing and access, offices, an industrial unit and a storage unit, which will be expected to provide additional jobs as well as those at the store.

The work is projected to be completed next year and the store expected to open during the summer months.

At the planning committee meeting, agents acting on behalf of Tesco, which has an existing store in the town, raised issues with the plans. Miles Young, director of Martin Robeson Planning, wrote to planners to say the planning report had been “wholly absent of an appraisal of the retail impacts of the application against relevant local and national policy tests”.

Aldi’s North Wales facilities manager, Bryn Richards, told committee members there was big local demand for the new store. He said: “This isn’t just about our new store. We will also deliver a new road into the site which has been allocated for employment use for 17 years. The site has been idle for this time.

“At a public exhibition in May we were overwhelmed by the amount of support from local people. The message we got was that customers wanted to see a new Aldi store in Ruthin as there is no discount supermarket.”

Ruthin county councillor, Huw Hilditch-Roberts, said: “We haven’t got sufficient employment land in Ruthin and this is a way of getting this site up to scratch to be able to build industrial units.”

Councillors voted unanimously to grant planning permission.