A NEW supermarket set to open in Bolton this summer has revealed its frustration after facing delays with construction in the last year and a half.
Venus Foods was first granted planning permission to convert the old United Carpets store in Manchester Road into a new outlet and in-store cafe.
When complete, it will be the third supermarket of the family-owned company, which already sells Mediterranean goods at its Manchester and Leeds stores.
After more than 18 months of construction work, neighbours have reached the end of their tether with the noise and have complained to the council.
But Omur Esengul, the supermarket’s senior manager, said the whole experience has been “nothing less than frustrating” for the firm too.
She said: “Unfortunately, one of our new neighbours has been quite unhappy with our presence. This is sad and we really hope he will change his mind once we are up and running.
“Every construction project has its own pace of completion depending on the size of the project undertaken.
“Any serious commercial project is also heavily regulated with all the planning permissions and regulations that have an impact on completion time.
“Big construction companies may speed up their processes with their networks, legal teams and giant budgets, but for us, it is a project we can only finish at our own pace.
“We applied to all regulatory state bodies and ticked all the boxes for safety standards. This has taken its normal time.
“In our case, our unhappy neighbour’s bombardments of complaints to pretty much all state bodies with wrongful accusations have brought the project on hold on several occasions.
“We can proudly say none of the accusations were correct. The wrongful accusations have cost us quite considerable time and additional costs that delayed the completion time. Not to mention the delay caused by COVID-19.”
David Price, who lives just a few yards away from the supermarket site, said he has been woken up nearly every morning by builders starting work at 7.30am.
But Mr Esengul said loud construction work does not start until 8.30am after early briefings, security checks and preparatory work take place first.
Work finishes at around 5.30pm, according to the supermarket spokesman.
He added: “We agree construction work might cause disturbances, but we try our best to limit that effect within reason and governmental guidelines.
“We understand our neighbour is extremely frustrated and unhappy with our presence.
“We hope his feeling will change in time when he realises, we only wish to finish the project as soon as possible and serve our community.
“But so far, the frustration has been mutual, and we have also suffered both mentally and financially from our neighbour’s consistent complaints and actions.
“In our opinion, his claims are unfounded and do not represent the bigger picture.”
The company hopes construction will be complete and the supermarket will be open to trade from August.
