Three planning applications have been lodged for a £10million retail park and new St John’s Garden Centre at Newport on the outskirts of Barnstaple, the North Devon Gazette has reported.

The new St John’s Garden Centre, provisionally scheduled for opening by Easter 2019, would be joined by an Aldi supermarket, a Costa drive-through outlet and a Marston’s pub, all of which would aim to be ready to open next summer.

They site at Roundswell next to the A39 is felt to provide a convenient linked shopping experience, giving people several things to do at one location, create better transport links and ease congestion.

The new garden centre and Aldi have been lodged as one application, while Costa and Marston’s are separate applications, with St John’s the applicant.

St John’s owner Nick Oliver had previously told the North Devon Gazette that the site would create around 250 jobs.  “We know that there is a huge demand by the public for this particular supermarket company to be represented in Barnstaple as they already have one in Bideford and trade is being haemorrhaged to Bideford where it should be staying in Barnstaple,” he is reported to have said.

Planning permission was given in 2014 to demolish the existing garden centre and build 44 homes on the site.

The new application would involver 198 parking spaces for the garden centre and another 102 for Aldi.