Vantage Group Operations UK Ltd has applied to use Unit 15 at Brunel Trade Park, on the Cheney Manor Industrial Estate, as an operating centre for four goods vehicles. A public notice has been issued, as is required whenever a company wants somewhere official to keep its lorries overnight.
Anyone nearby who feels their use and enjoyment of their land would suffer has 21 days to write to the Traffic Commissioner at Quarry House in Leeds, and also to Vantage Group itself, setting out their objections to four vans existing in a unit that, until recently, was presumably used for something else involving vans.
It is understood that the Traffic Commissioner, some 180 miles away and unlikely ever to visit Cheney Manor in person, will weigh the merits of the application without the benefit of having seen the car park, the pothole near the entrance, or the industrial bin that has been on fire twice this year for reasons nobody has fully explained.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said in Ron's day a man simply bought a van, parked it somewhere flat, and got on with his life, without anyone in Leeds needing to be consulted. 'I'm not one to gossip,' she said, 'but the chap two doors down has had a transit outside his house since March and nobody's written to anyone about that.'
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the application had given him a new way of describing his own firm's delivery van, which technically operates from a space behind the recycling bins that nobody has ever formally agreed he can use. He said he once tried to apply for an 'operating centre' for the trailer he tows his band's amplifiers in, but the form asked for a vehicle registration and his trailer only has a number on it in marker pen.
Objections must be submitted in writing within 21 days, a window Vantage Group will no doubt spend waiting, much like the four vehicles themselves, somewhere quietly, with the engine off.
The industrial bin, reached for comment, continued smouldering gently and would not be drawn on the matter.