Lewes Lidl: Redesigned Brooks Road Store Out for Comment

Lidl is asking Lewes what it thinks of a redesigned supermarket for Brooks Road, eight months after the South Downs National Park Authority refused the first version.

The consultation is running now. Lidl says it expects to submit a fresh planning application in September or October 2026, with a decision in 2027.

Nothing has been submitted yet, so there is no application to comment on through the planning portal. At this stage the only route is Lidl’s own feedback form.

What the National Park refused, and why

The first application, SDNP/25/01871/FUL, was for the demolition of existing buildings and a Class E foodstore with parking, access and landscaping on land east of Brooks Road. It was received on 1 May 2025 and refused on 12 December 2025, the day after the Authority’s planning committee met.

The decision notice gives three reasons:

• Design and heritage. The store’s “generic, functional form, scale and layout” would fail to conserve and enhance a key gateway into the historic town. The Authority pointed to the large tarmac car park, blank primary elevations and utilitarian boundary treatments, and found harm to the setting of the Lewes Conservation Area and the Grade II listed Old Brewery.
• Noise. Too little information was provided to assess the noise impact on nearby homes, or to show it could be mitigated.
• No legal agreement. Without a signed section 106 the scheme secured none of the obligations officers wanted.

That third reason is worth reading in full, because it prices the scheme. The missing obligations were:

• a relocation strategy with 12 months of support and a lease extension for the firms in the industrial units due to be demolished
• £50,000 towards town centre improvements and employment initiatives
• £15,000 towards the emerging Air Quality Management Plan
• £94,380 towards continued bus services in the Lewes area
• a £6,000 travel plan monitoring fee
• real-time public transport displays inside the store

The principle of a supermarket here was not the problem

The officer report to the committee is clear that the objection was to this building, not to the idea of a shop.

Officers concluded that, provided a relocation strategy and the £50,000 town centre contribution could be secured, “the principle of a retail use of the site is, on balance, acceptable”. They also found the scheme acceptable on access and parking, sustainable construction, ecology, drainage and air quality.

The report sets out the scale of what was proposed:

It also records how divided the town was: 220 letters of support, 132 objections and six neutral representations. The objectors included Cycle Lewes, the Friends of Lewes, the Lewes Conservation Area Advisory Group, the Lewes Chamber of Commerce and the Lewes Friday Food Market. Lewes Town Council objected, calling the building “large, bland and unsuitable as a gateway building to the Town”. Waitrose and Tesco each objected separately. The Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company wrote in support.

What Lidl says has changed

Lidl’s consultation website accepts that the refusal was about design, neighbour amenity and heritage, and says it has “completely re-designed” the scheme after talking to the Authority’s planning, design and heritage officers.

The changes it lists are:

• the store building repositioned, with an active frontage onto both Malling Street and Brooks Road
• a bespoke design for the corner rather than a standard store type
• a landscape buffer between the store and its neighbours
• rainwater gardens in the car park for drainage
• a green boulevard of new street trees along Brooks Road, keeping the existing tree cluster on the Malling Street corner
• new pedestrian access onto Malling Street, stepped and ramped, lining up with the existing crossing point, plus a new crossing over Brooks Road
• cycle parking, EV charging points and rooftop solar panels

Lidl repeats the figure of 40 jobs and says its starting rate for hourly-paid staff is £13.45, rising to £14.45 with service.

One oddity is worth flagging. Every page of the consultation site is headed “A new Lidl store & new homes for Brooks Road, Lewes”, but the published boards, the site plan and the proposals page describe only the store, its car park and its landscaping. No housing appears anywhere in the material.

The dates

• August to September 2026: public consultation, on Lidl’s own website
• September to October 2026: planning application expected
• 2027: decision by the National Park Authority
• Later in 2027: construction, if permission is granted

Lidl calls the timeline indicative and subject to change.

What it means for you

If you have a view, now is the moment it costs least to express. Lidl’s feedback form is on its consultation site, and the company can also be reached on 0800 089 0361 or at lidl@new-stores.co.uk. Anything you say goes to the planning authority as part of the application, and Lidl’s own privacy notice says your details are shared with the Authority so it can verify the comments are genuine.

When the application is actually submitted, the place to comment formally is the South Downs National Park planning register, not Lidl. Lewes town sits inside the National Park, so it is the Authority and not Lewes District Council that decides this.

The site is currently occupied, and that matters to more people than shoppers. The officer report describes a former car service and repair workshop of about 900 sq m, a former car dealership and plant room of about 1,320 sq m, and an office building of four conjoined units at about 420 sq m. Some of that floorspace sits inside the Central Lewes principal employment site. The relocation strategy attached to any new permission is what decides whether those firms have somewhere to go.

We track applications across the district on our Lewes planning news page.