COUNCILLORS fear money will not be available for traffic calming measures once a major supermarket opens on the outskirts of Durham.

Tesco has submitted revised proposals for the store, on the former Hugh Mackay carpet factory at Dragonville, which won planning permission earlier this year.

Many of the 450 staff required will be local unemployed people, trained at the £15m store through a partnership which Tesco has piloted in other parts of the country.

It originally proposed a 69,000 sq ft store with a petrol station and three non-food units.

Now it plans to build a 87,000 sq ft store, incorporating non-food space, petrol station and one other unit.

It also revised the site layout and is proposing to close Rennys Lane to through traffic to meet local concerns about side streets becoming short cuts.

Durham city councillors are concerned that £20,000 Tesco offered to set aside for traffic calming measures, needed once the store opens, will be spent beforehand on the Rennys Lane closure.

The development control committee deferred a decision on the new planning application - it was recommended to give approval - until the situation is clarified with Tesco.

The council's head of planning David Thornborrow said Durham County Council, the highways authority, did not expect any problems once the store opened.

"The county council would have to take responsibility for any matters they didn't pick up in assessing the application,'' he added.

Gilesgate Moor councillor Pat Conway said: "If £20,000 will be taken up with the blocking up of Rennys Lane and there remain problems with traffic flows in Mill Lane and Frank Street, how can we be reassured that calming measures will be quickly put in there?

"There doesn't seem to be any confirmation we can take away to reassure residents. It is not really tight enough.''

Carrville councillor Joe Knight said: "We were given assurances that any traffic problems that emerged would be addressed, but that now appears not to be the case.''

The committee was told that it could not legally require Tesco to pay for measures that could not be identified now.