WYRE Forest District Council is temporarily relaxing the enforcement of planning conditions restricting night-time and early morning deliveries to retailers of food, sanitary and other essential items.

The move will provide the retailers with greater flexibility and help them minimise disruption to supply chains amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The announcement follows a written statement to Parliament on Friday by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government requesting local authorities to make sure planning controls are not a barrier to food and other essential deliveries over the period of disruption caused by the outbreak.

Councillor Fran Oborski, Wyre Forest District Council’s Cabinet member for Economic Regeneration, Planning and Capital Investments said:

“Wyre Forest District Council will not be actively enforcing restrictions on timing of deliveries at any retailer of food, sanitary or other essential items, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, in Wyre Forest until the end of May. We will then review whether to extend that approach in light of progress of the coronavirus outbreak.

We hope that this move will help supermarkets and other shops selling food, sanitary and other essential items to minimise disruption to their supply chains on which our communities depend.

We will encourage shops to maintain normal delivery hours where possible and to take due consideration of residents when conducting ‘out of hours’ deliveries, but we believe that the interests of residents in having essential supplies in shops outweigh any temporary inconvenience that might be experienced if some deliveries are outside normal hours.”