Busy Cannock petrol station to be demolished and made bigger

The move follows a 20 per cent rise in the number of cars on the road in the past 12 years while at the same time more than a third of service stations have closed.

Shell wants to knock down its existing petrol station on the A5 Longford Island along with a neighbouring bathroom showroom to create a bigger premises, including a new shop. The old pumps and fuel storage tanks would also be removed and replaced.

The bigger service station would include 10 new pumps for cars and three pumps for lorries, and would operate a one-way system with the only entrance to the site located on Watling Street and the exit on Wolverhampton Road.

Currently the site has separate car and lorry filling stations with no access between them. The bathroom showroom, on the HGV side, has no formal planning consent, although it has been there for some time.

There are plans for the shop to include a deli with a hot food counter, selling breakfast and lunch sandwiches and other snacks. Six customer parking spaces and a bay for air and water are incorporated in the plans.

In its application to Cannock Chase Council, Shell said there had been a trend of service station closures across the UK, with 35 per cent shutting since 2003. Over the same period the number of vehicles on the road has shot up by a fifth.

The company said: "As such the redevelopment of the filling station needs to provide for a higher throughput. The existing station is therefore reaching the end of its life and the fuel tanks need replacing, hence the proposal to redevelop the site."

The new design would result in an increase in traffic on the A5 Watling Street but Shell argued its plan was the best layout for optimum traffic flow and least congestion as vehicles would always be turning left into and out of the site.