MORRISONS is coming to Abergavenny - after 14 years of talking about redeveloping the Cattle Market with a foodstore.

The Monmouthshire county planning committee voted by nine votes to four on Tuesday to approve the application, despite objections from the town's five main groups - Chamber of Trade, Civic Society, Bryn y Cwm Forum, Development Forum and Abergavenny Town Council and KALM (Keep Abergavenny's Livestock Market).

As well as the 25,000 sq.ft. foodstore, the development will include a new public library provided by Monmouthshire County Council, a 290-space car park with 20 spaces for the disabled and nine for parents/children, a new access with a dedicated left hand lane off Park Road and a new pedestrian thoroughfare linking Brewery Yard and Market Street with Bailey Park and the Fairfield car park. The abattoir buildings will be demolished.

Head of planning George Ashworth said it had been a very long saga, which started with the Three Towns Initiative in 1997 when it was proposed that the answer to Abergavenny's perceived lack of a foodstore could best be solved by developing the Cattle Market site.

He said it is estimated that 40 per cent of retail expenditure goes elsewhere to supermarkets in Cwmbran, Brynmawr or Hereford. In 2004 the council gained planning permission from its own committee for an outline scheme to develop the site with a foodstore, retaining the slaughterhouse buildings and this won the support of all the town groups, but no developer came forward.

In 2006 the scheme by Asda was first considered but members rejected the big wavy roofline and expressed concerns about the traffic impact and the application was dismissed by the planning committee in January 2007. Asda then looked at amending the design and a competition was organised, but the company suddenly withdrew their scheme. Mr Ashworth said members were consulted on whether they wanted a traditional or a modern design for Morrisons and they opted for modern.

David Haswell for the five main town groups said they all agreed that the scheme would be better if the foodstore was placed at the Lion Street end of the site because it would create a street scene and a sense of enclosure and provide better town centre links.

He said they all felt the scheme creates the impression of a suburban out of town layout in a sensitive edge of town centre site resulting in a poorly designed contemporary box dominated by the large car park.

Barry Greenwood for KALM said redeveloping the Cattle Market site would destroy the one thing that is key to Abergavenny. He said the wider community, specially farmers, had not been consulted, and although the council claimed to have consulted with them, no evidence had been produced. He said there was plenty of evidence of the harm that supermarkets cause to small towns and it was a threadbare argument to say it would regenerate the town. The Cattle Market is not a dead historic relic but a thriving market place.

Chris Creighton, planning consultant for Morrisons said the scheme will include a landscaped pedestrian route from Brewery Yard and Market Street through to Bailey Park and the Fairfield, as well as various highway improvements on Park Road, including new pedestrian crossings. The foodstore will create 280 new jobs and they would enter into an agreement that the jobs would go to local people. He said the size of the foodstore would represent 62% of the Waitrose supermarket at Llanfoist.

Councillor Maureen Powell said she welcomed the scheme because with cars parking nearer Lion Street it would encourage shoppers to use the town centre after doing their shopping in Morrisons.

But Councillor Douglas Edwards, who voted against the scheme, said, "The proposed design causes considerable concern in relation to the shopping area. It does not take into account a traditional design and I have a positive dislike of the columns planned for the library design. The design of Morrisons in Brecon is very much better. KALM have given reasoned arguments and the money spent on this scheme would have comfortably paid for the modernisation of the livestock market."

A move by Councillor James George to approve the scheme without a cafe in Morrisons was defeated.