What does the future hold for retail land next to Kettering's Tesco?

Tesco says it has no immediate plans to develop a site next to its Kettering superstore after the discounter they had once earmarked to open there shut.

The retail giant outlined ambitions for a new retail unit attached to its Carina Road shop in 2017, initially keeping quiet over who they intended to occupy it.

The following year the Northants Telegraph revealed they planned to open a new Jack's store there - a discount grocer named after Tesco founder Jack Cohen - and the bid was approved by the now-defunct Kettering Borough Council.

But the plan never came to fruition and any faint hope that it would ended four weeks ago when Tesco announced it was closing the Jack's chain.

Now, more than four years after plans for a new retail store were first mooted, a Tesco spokesman admitted they don't have any immediate plans to develop the site.

The spokesman said: "We will keep the community updated should the situation change.”

It's not known whether any other retailers have shown any interest in the site in recent months.

In November North Northamptonshire Council approved a bid to amend a planning condition so minor works - the digging of a trench - could be carried out at the site.

It meant the granted planning permission remained extant, with approval to the amendment given just 11 days before it would have lapsed.

Planning documents submitted in 2018 said there was no concrete commitment for Jack's to occupy the unit, but that Tesco had made a public commitment to that effect.

The Jack's concept was only launched by Tesco in September 2018, with the first store opening in Chatteris in Cambridgeshire.

Of the 13 stores that were opened across the country six will be converted to Tesco stores and the remaining seven will shut completely.

Since the Kettering Jack's application a store by rival Aldi was knocked down and rebuilt in the Carina Road retail park opposite the Tesco Extra.