Planning permission for a car auctioning business to be developed in East Kilbride has been granted. 

Councillors at South Lanarkshire Council’s  planning committee meeting last week agreed to approve the development of a Copart UK Limited site on the former Freescale Semiconductor Works and former Jeyes Chemical Factory on Stroud Road.

The application is for a car storage depot, distribution and processing of cars,  the development of ancillary buildings, car parking, access and associated infrastructure. 

The site includes open storage areas for up to 5000 cars, an office building, processing building, a vehicle receiving area and photographic bays, motorcycle storage, wash bays and a de pollution building and area.

The main operating hours for the business will be between 7.30am to 6pm with car deliveries and exports occurring between 8.30am and 5pm Monday to Friday with a small number outside these hours and during the weekend. 

The vehicles will be sold as whole vehicles and all are sold only in online auctions and only to trade members, the premises are not open to the general public for retail sales. 

One main car access point is proposed from Colvilles Road at the location of the existing site access – this will be used by large vehicle transporters and other smaller vehicles dropping off and collecting cars and as access to customer and staff parking. 

The new facility will create around 60 jobs and around 30 will be office and yard staff with the rest being specialist and transportation including HGV drivers.

Councillor John Anderson expressed concerns with road congestion at the area, he said:  “I’m concerned about the amount of vehicles that will be going in and out here, particularly from Stroud Road which is an extremely busy road. That is going to create havoc on that road depending on how many vehicles moving in and out, do we know how many will be moving in and out, I know it’s storage for 5000 cars but how many are going to be in and out in a day, do we have any idea what the expectation of that is?”

The council’s roads and transportation services were consulted about this development and a transport statement was carried out which estimated that there will be around 100 movements throughout the whole day, with the expected 30 to 40 employees arriving before peak time. 

Statutory neighbourhood notification was undertaken and one comment was received relating to the flora, fauna and species in the area, these concerns were addressed by the council and given the location and condition of the site, it was  considered unlikely that there would be any such impacts in this case. 

Planning officers were in favour of the development as it will bring the site back into use and modernise a centralised facility, the proposed use is acceptable in planning terms.