LEDBURY people will have to wait a little longer before catching sight of Aldi's plans for a supermarket on the New Mills industrial estate, because of a "silly glitch" concerning the paying of planning fees to Herefordshire Council.

The council confirmed this week that Aldi's application for a supermarket on the site had been invalidated, "due to an administrative error on the agent’s part".

A Herefordshire Council spokesman added: "The application is invalid, at the moment. The agent has been informed and we expect them to re-submit the application in due course."

The news will come as a disappointment to many Ledbury residents who, following Aldi's announcement last week that a planning application had been submitted, were waiting for Herefordshire Council to officially register the planning application and put it online.

Now this is not likely to happen for a week or even longer.

An Aldi spokesman said the matter was being sorted out as a matter of urgency with Herefordshire Council on Tuesday (March 15).

The spokesman said: "The glitch was something to do with fees being paid to Herefordshire Council, and it's being cleared up. The application will be re-submitted immediately . It is being resolved today (March 15), and I would expect the application to be online within the next week or so."

He said the delay was down to "a silly glitch really" and he added that the planning application would not contain many changes or surprises when compared to the initial proposal for the store, which Aldi put forward in October, 2015.

Aldi stated in the autumn that the store would be not be a superstore, unlike the Sainsbury's proposal for the same site which was rejected by Herefordshire Council in February, 2012.

Aldi revealed that the "gross external area" of the proposed store would be 1807 square metres. The proposed "gross floorspace" of the proposed Sainsbury's store was 5427.8 square metres, which means the Aldi store would be approximately three times smaller than that.

The store would lead to the creation of around 40 new jobs.

The Aldi spokesman said this week that changes in the plan to be submitted would include extra landscaping for car parks, following suggestions from the public during the recent consultation period.

Ledbury's mayor, Cllr Annette Crowe said she had never heard of such a planning glitch before, but added that she did not, in any case, expect the Aldi application to come before Ledbury Town Council until the new town council forms with a new mayor, in May.

Cllr Crowe said: "It will be considered when it comes along. We'll just have to wait and see."