LCC Group, owner of the Go unmanned petrol station brand, has submitted planning permission for a new 24-hour forecourt at Heysham Port in Lancashire.
The site is located within the centre of a gyratory that forms part of Princess Alexandra Way. It is approximately 1.5km to the south-west of Heysham Village Centre.
The planning application seeks to demolish an existing building and in its place develop a four-pump unmanned PFS for cars/light goods vehicles; a bunkering area comprising four pumps for HGVs; 10 parking spaces for HGVs; a service bay for cars (air and water); drivers’ facilities building, including toilets, showers and vending machines; and a storage and control room building.
The application includes details of a survey done at an Asda unmanned site in Liverpool, which found that the average observed transaction time per car on a Friday was 154 seconds and 159 seconds on Saturday. It calculated that there would therefore be an average of 22 available windows of opportunity usage per hour, per pump. And with the four pumps in total, it forecast that it would have a maximum throughput of some 88 arrivals per hour in total.
LCC says the proposed site plan provides ample room for at least two cars to queue behind each pump.
With regards to the HGV facilities, the planning application assumes that, on average, each HGV bay will have a turnaround of one HGV every two hours. “This is considered to be robust on the basis that some of the bays are likely to be used for overnight parking, or for longer periods of time in accordance with the European Union’s Drivers’ Hours Rules, which the UK continues to follow,” it says.
Based on this assumed turnaround time, this would equate to 24 two-way HGV movements per HGV parking space per day.
The driver facilities building and car services bays are considered to be ‘ancillary’ to the primary PFS /HGV refuelling and parking aspects of the proposed development and, as such, would not generate any ‘new’ trips by themselves, says LCC. It believes that the majority, if not all trips to the site, will be made by vehicles travelling to/from Heysham Port and the surrounding industrial areas.