National pizza company explains why it moved into Northampton town centre unit without planning permission

A national pizza company has explained why it moved into a Northampton town centre retail unit without planning permission.

Tops Pizza opened a new takeaway branch at number four Sheep Street - which was previously an empty retail unit - in June this year.

However, plans for the pizza chain to move in were only submitted on West Northamptonshire Council's (WNC) planning portal on September 1, with a decision yet to be made to approve or refuse the move.

A Tops Pizza spokesman said: "The application [has] been with the council since July 2022 and it has taken its time to approve our application.

"The premises already had an E licence which covers restaurant and not takeaway. We can easily change the layout of shop to cover us on E licence. I hope this will explain why we have entered this premises without getting an approval first."

The spokesman added: "I hope WNC can expedite the application. We are new to the Northampton area and we wish that the council can help us grow our business in Northamptonshire.

"We have been in market since 1988 and supplied fresh pizzas to the public. This is a British company and [we] want our local authority to promote and help us."

However, WNC said not all the required information was submitted in July.

Stuart Timmiss, of WNC, said: "Under class E the unit can change to a restaurant without needing planning permission, but not a hot food takeaway. This use therefore requires planning permission. The applicant was advised of this by the council, and they submitted an application seeking to regularise that use.

"The application was submitted in July but didn’t have all the information with it needed to make it a valid application to enable the application process to begin.

"We wrote to the applicant and advised what was needed and they provided that information and the application was made valid and the application process started."

A decision will be made on October 27 as to whether to approve or refuse Tops Pizza's application. If the application is rejected, Tops Pizza could be liable to enforcement action.