Plans to build a McDonalds in Bedhampton postponed for now.

Plans to build a drive-thru McDonalds in Bedhampton near the Asda superstore were postponed for now by Havant Borough Councillors at a planning meeting last night. They decided not to grant permission for the build yet, until further traffic reports and surveys have been carried out.

The roundabout is one of the busiest in Havant and traffic is a concern there already. If this drive-thru is built it would become more congested and figures presented at the meeting showed that on average an extra 10 cars would use this junction every five minutes.

An application had already been turned down in 2002 because the traffic reports showed that this roundabout and junction would not be able to cope with the extra traffic. Traffic has obviously become much worse since then.

McDonalds had submitted traffic reports to the council but they were carried out by them and not independently so would be biased.

Committee member Cllr Michael Wilson said: 'I'm nervous that we don't have all the necessary traffic information here.'I wouldn't like to throw away the application without having that, but I don't see how we can pass it without this information.'

The restaurant would create 30 full time jobs and 50 part time jobs and has some support as McDonalds would have to contribute more than £75,000 towards transport improvements in Havant, so for now we will just have to wait and see. I will update when more information becomes available.

Photo thanks to ell brown on Flickr